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Diana was the first to mitigate the silence with comment [he read] a silence whose depth had only been rendered the more depressing by Miss Miller's uncalled-for intrusion upon our mood of something that smacked of a society towards which most of us, in so far as we were able to do so, had always cultivated a strenuous aloofness, prompted not by any whelmful sense of our own perfection, latent or obvious, but rather by a realization on our part that it lacked the essentials that could make of it an interesting part of the lives of a group given over wholly, or at least as nearly wholly as the exiguities of existence would permit of a persistent and continuous devotion, to the contemplation of the beautiful in art, letters, or any other phase of human endeavor.
"And did his soul never thaw?" Diana asked.
"Never," replied Vanderbank, "It is frozen yet."
Here the rumbling sound grew to such volume that, absorbed as he was in his reading, Jones could no longer fail to hear it. Lowering his ma.n.u.script, he looked sternly upon the company. The rumbling sound was a chorus, not unmusical, of snores.
_The Dreamers slept._
"Well, I'll be hanged!" cried Jones, angrily, and then he walked over and looked behind the screen where the stenographer was seated. "I'll finish it if it takes all night," he muttered. "Just take this down,"
he added to the stenographer; but that worthy never stirred or made reply. _He too was sleeping._
Jones muttered angrily to himself.
"Very well," he said. "I'll read it to myself, then," and he began again. For ten minutes he continued, and then on a sudden his voice faltered; his head fell forward upon his chest, his knees collapsed beneath him, and he slid inert, and snoring himself, into his chair. The MS. fluttered to the floor, and an hour later the waiters entering the room found the club unanimously engaged in dreaming once more.
The Involvular Club was too much for them, even for the author of it, but whether this was because of the lateness of the hour or because of the intricacies of the author's style I have never been able to ascertain, for Mr. Jones is very sore on the point, and therefore reticent, and as for the others, I cannot find that any of them remember enough about it to be able to speak intelligently on the subject.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE STENOGRAPHER SLEPT]
All I do know is what the landlord tells me, and that is that at 5 A.M.
thirteen cabs containing thirteen sleeping souls pursued their thirteen devious ways to thirteen different houses, thus indicating that the Dreamers were ultimately adjourned, and, as they have not met since, I presume the adjournment was, as usual, _sine die_.
THE END
