. . . . . . .
The denouement was bound to come.
It came.
It was late at night.
De Vere was standing beside Dorothea in the brilliantly lighted hall of the Grand Palaver Hotel, where they had had supper. Mr. Overgold was busy for a moment at the cashier’s desk.
“Dorothea,” de Vere whispered passionately, “I want to take you away, away from all this. I want you.”
She turned and looked him full in the face. Then she put her hand in his, smiling bravely.
“I will come,” she said.
“Listen,” he went on, “the Gloritania sails for England to-morrow at midnight. I have everything ready. Will you come?”
“Yes,” she answered, “I will”; and then passionately, “Dearest, I will follow you to England, to Liverpool, to the end of the earth.”
She paused in thought a moment and then added.
“Come to the house just before midnight. William, the second chauffeur (he is devoted to me), shall be at the door with the third car. The fourth footman will bring my things—I can rely on him; the fifth housemaid can have them all ready—she would never betray me. I will have the undergardener—the sixth—waiting at the iron gate to let you in; he would die rather than fail me.”
She paused again—then she went on.
“There is only one thing, dearest, that I want to ask. It is not much. I hardly think you would refuse it at such an hour. May I bring my husband with me?”
De Vere’s face blanched.
“Must you?” he said.
“I think I must,” said Dorothea. “You don’t know how I’ve grown to value, to lean upon, him. At times I have felt as if I always wanted him to be near me; I like to feel wherever I am—at the play, at a restaurant, anywhere —that I can reach out and touch him. I know,” she continued, “that it’s only a wild fancy and that others would laugh at it, but you can understand, can you not—carino caruso mio? And think, darling, in our new life, how busy he, too, will be—making money for all of us—in a new money market. It’s just wonderful how he does it.”
A great light of renunciation lit up de Vere’s face.
“Bring him,” he said.
“I knew that you would say that,” she murmured, “and listen, pochito pocket-edition, may I ask one thing more, one weeny thing? William, the second chauffeur—I think he would fade away if I were gone—may I bring him, too? Yes! O my darling, how can I repay you? And the second footman, and the third housemaid—if I were gone I fear that none of—”
“Bring them all,” said de Vere half bitterly; “we will all elope together.”
And as he spoke Mr. Overgold sauntered over from the cashier’s desk, his open purse still in his hand, and joined them. There was a dreamy look upon his face.
“I wonder,” he murmured, “whether personality survives or whether it, too, when up against the irresistible, dissolves and resolves itself into a series of negative reactions?”
De Vere’s empty heart echoed the words.
Then they passed out and the night swallowed them up.