A continuous process is described for contacting an olefins-containing feed gas stream, freed of CO.sub.2 and sulfur compounds, in a front-end heat-pumped depropanizer to remove the C.sub.4+ compounds, selectively hydrogenating the overhead stream to significantly reduce the acetylene and diolefins content, dehydrating the reactor effluent to remove traces of moisture, feeding the dehydrated stream to an intercooled and reboiled demethanizing absorber to produce a rich solvent containing ethylene and heavier hydrocarbons, feeding the absorber overhead stream to an auto refrigerated recovery unit to remove hydrogen, methane, and CO as overhead to a fuel gas system, separating the rich solvent in a solvent regenerator into an overhead stream of ethylene and heavier hydrocarbons and a bottom lean solvent stream for recycle to the demethanizing absorber, combining the overhead of the solvent regenerator with the bottoms of the demethanizer in the auto refrigerated recovery unit, and feeding the combined stream to a deethanizer which produces an overhead stream that is split into ethylene as product and ethane for recycling to the cracker.