Elon Musk sat stoically in a Manhattan courtroom Thursday, hands clasped in front of him, as a federal judge weighed whether to hold him in contempt of court. The proximate cause was a tweet Musk sent in February that the Securities and Exchange Commission argues violated the terms of their settlement. And when the judge ultimately punted on the decision, ordering his lawyers and the SEC to work out their differences and come back in two weeks with a resolution, he seemed relieved.

“Take a breath,” said US District Court Judge Alison Nathan. “Come back with your reasonableness pants on.”

“Come back with your reasonableness pants on.”

As he was leaving the courtroom, I asked Musk what he thought about the judge’s call to action. Nathan is “an outstanding judge,” Musk said softly. Then again, before stepping on to a cramped elevator, he said, “I’m very impressed with Judge Nathan’s analysis.”

The hearing was the result of a filing on February 25th, when the SEC asked a federal judge to hold the Tesla CEO in contempt. The agency claimed a February 19th tweet by Musk violated language in a previous settlement between the SEC and Musk. In the tweet, Musk said Tesla would make “around 500k” cars in 2018, which the SEC believed contradicted the official guidance from the company filed January 30th. Musk even published a correction hours after, which the SEC later determined happened because the Tesla lawyer in charge of monitoring Musk’s tweets felt it needed to be amended.

The SEC argued that Musk was supposed to have his public communications about Tesla — tweets included — pre-approved by a designated in-house lawyer as part of the settlement agreement signed last September. Musk disputes that pre-approval was part of that settlement, which was reached after the agency sued Musk for securities fraud over tweets he sent in August about taking Tesla private. Musk said at the time that he had “funding secured” to pull off the move, but the SEC determined that was false. As a result, Musk was forced out as Tesla chairman and had to pay a $20 million fine.

Since February’s contempt request, Musk and the SEC have sparred exclusively in court documents. Musk’s lawyers characterized the SEC’s interpretation of the settlement as an “unconstitutional power grab,” and that the attempt to hold him in contempt is “virtually wrong at every level.” The SEC hit back, claiming Musk was in “blatant violation” of the September settlement.

Today was the first time the two sides appeared in a courtroom to present their arguments to a judge

Today was the first time the two sides appeared in a courtroom to present their arguments to a judge. The result was two hours of semantic debate, with Judge Nathan, the SEC, and Musk’s legal team wrangling over the language in the settlement. The SEC accused Musk of “recklessly tweeting out information with no basis in fact,” of disregarding the language in the settlement, and then relying on “shifting justifications” to explain his actions. Musk’s team countered that the settlement was ambiguously written, and anyway his tweets were immaterial and required no pre-approval.

“This is an unusual case,” Judge Nathan said during the hearing, to which SEC attorney Cheryl Crumpton agreed, “It is an unusual case.”

Toward the end, though, Judge Nathan was disinclined to make a ruling on the contempt charge. “I’ll admit surprise,” she said. “To me, this screams working it out.”

And that’s what the SEC and Musk must now do, as Judge Nathan has given both sides two weeks to reach a conclusion. If there is no resolution, the judge said, “You’ll hear from me.”

And there may be more trouble in store for Musk. During the hearing, Crumpton said the SEC has found Tesla’s role on monitoring Musk’s social media activity to be “very troubling,” and that the agency was “still evaluating” whether to take any action against the electric car company as well.

As he was leaving the courthouse, a reporter asked Musk if he will keep tweeting — an arguably frivolous activity that has caused him so much consternation, in addition to tens of millions of dollars in fines. Why keep doing it? Why not just stop?

He looked back over his shoulder, grinned, and winked.