Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy | Page 8

and Mr. Overgold would sit in the gallery and Dorothea
downstairs; at times one of them would sit in Row A, another in Row B,
and a third in Row C; at other times two would sit in Row B and one in
Row C; at the opera, at times, one of the three would sit listening, the
others talking, at other times two listening and one talking, and at other
times three talking and none listening.
Thus the three formed together one of the most perplexing, maddening
triangles that ever disturbed the society of the metropolis.
. . . . . . .
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.

CHAPTER IV
At a little before midnight on the next night, two motors filled with
muffled human beings might have been perceived, or seen, moving
noiselessly from Riverside Drive to the steamer wharf where lay the

Gloritania.
A night of intense darkness enveloped the Hudson. Outside the inside
of the dockside a dense fog wrapped the Statue of Liberty. Beside the
steamer customs officers and deportation officials moved silently to
and fro in long black cloaks, carrying little deportation lanterns in their
hands.
To these Mr. Overgold presented in silence his deportation certificates,
granting his party permission to leave the United States under the
imbecility clause of the Interstate Commerce Act.
No objection was raised.
A few moments later the huge steamer was slipping away in the
darkness.
On its deck a little group of people, standing beside a pile of first-class
cabin luggage, directed a last sad look through their heavy black
disguise at the rapidly vanishing shore which they could not see.
De Vere, who stood in the midst of