"Cara!" Benton was standing on the step. His voice was tremulous with solicitude and perplexed anxiety. "Cara!" he repeated. "What does it mean?"
"I don't know," she responded coolly. "Something seems to be broken."
"I don't mean that." McGuire was already investigating. "What does it mean?"
"When I foolishly agreed to play Juliet to your Romeo," she informed him, and her tones were frigid, "I didn't know that your Romeo was really only a Dromio. The other edition of you"--he flinched at the words, and McGuire choked violently--"is back there, I believe, hunting for matches."
"She's all right, sir," interrupted McGuire in triumph. "She'll travel now. It's only disconnected spark plugs and a short circuiting."
"Travel, then!" snapped Benton. "Leave the runabout here. The other gentleman may prefer not to walk home."
As he swung himself into the tonneau, the chauffeur had already seized the wheel and the car was backing for the turn. Far back up the hillside there was a crashing of underbrush. A spectral figure, struggling with the unaccustomed drapery of a Bedouin robe, emerged from the woods into the open, and halted in momentary astonishment.
"I believe I am under parole--to the other Dromio--not to run away," she suggested wearily.
"Oh, that's all right; I'm doing this and I have no treaty with Galavia," replied the gentleman pleasantly. "Hit her up a bit, McGuire."
He took one of the hands that lay wearily in Cara's lap and she did not withdraw it. She only lay back in the leather upholstery and said nothing. Finally he bent nearer.
She only turned her head and smiled forgiveness.
"Oh, I'm so tired--so tired of all of it," she sighed. "Don't you see? I wish someone bigger than I am would take me away to a place where they had never heard of a throne--somewhere beyond the Milky Way."
He took her in his arms, and the spangle-crowned gipsy head fell heavily on his shoulder. She stretched up both arms towards the stars, and the moonlight glinted from her gilt bracelets.
"Somewhere beyond the Milky Way," she murmured, then collapsed like a tired child and lay still.
"Dearest," he whispered, "I'll tell you a secret." He paused and listened to the rhythmic cylinders throbbing a racing pulse; he looked back at the white band of road that was being flung out behind them like thread from a falling spool. He held her fiercely to him and kissed her. "I'll tell you a secret. You are being stolen. The _Isis_ is waiting in a little cove, and there is steam in her engines, and a chaplain on board. If it's necessary I shall run up the skull and cross-bones at her masthead. Do you hear?" Then, with a less piratical voice: "Dearest, I love you."