Free To Journey Together by Mary Burchell

anything else. Is it so surprising? Don't people
    usually like you and find you interesting?"
     
    Ilsa smiled and shrugged slightly.
    "Oh, we're reasonably attractive, I suppose, and people like to have us at parties because we pull our weight socially and that sort of thing. But they don't care about us or what happens to us as individuals. Why should they? You somehow give the impression of caring about people for themselves. Oh, I'm not expressing it well, of course, because there is really no way of describing these intangible things."
    "I think you express it very well," Elinor told her. "I do care, as you put it. Of course I care about people. Whom should one care about if not 'people'?"
    "Oneself, I suppose," the other girl retorted frankly. "That's what nearly everyone does, you know."
    Elinor smiled.
    "Well, I won't pretend I'm not interested in myself and what happens to me," she conceded. "That would be either stupid or insincere. But that doesn't rule out an interest in—even a concern for—other people. Why should it?"
    "It could do. What if your own interests conflicted very sharply with those of someone else? What would you do then?"
    Elinor considered that. She had never before indulged in so much self-analysis, and this conversation half intrigued, half disturbed her.
    "It all depends on the rights of the case, Ilsa," she said at last.
    "There you are!" Ilsa laughed. "To most people the 'rights of the case' and their own interests are the same thing. That's what makes you different."
    "But thousands of people argue the way I do," Elinor insisted.
    "And millions argue the way I do," retorted Ilsa rather mockingly. "But never mind—you're sweet! And all the sweeter because you don't even know that you're unusual. I feel lots better now." She got up, stretched and yawned a little. "I'll look in and see how Rudi is and then go to bed. I think I shall sleep now. Good night, and thank you." And, quite unexpectedly, she kissed Elinor.
     
    "Good night."
    Elinor returned the kiss, once more curiously touched. She did not think Ilsa often kissed people. At least, not as though the kiss meant anything. And she could not help feeling that there was some sort of genuine emotion behind the impulse.
    Ilsa went out of the room, and, left to herself, Elinor returned to bed, and lay there for quite a long time thinking about Ilsa and Rudi, infinitely glad that she was to see more of them, after all.
    The next day, the chief topic of conversation in the place was Rudi's interesting accident. A broken arm or leg on the ski-in g slopes would have been a very ordinary affair. Such things happened any time. But to be knocked down by a car in Ehrwald was something of an event. For one thing, cars were not particularly numerous, and those that did appear usually negotiated the village street with care.
    "I hear it was a girl who was driving," Lady Connelton said, over the breakfast-table. "She isn't staying here, but at the big hotel." (Thus was the shame attached to a rival establishment.)
    "Someone said she had only just arrived," Elinor contributed. "She was driving in."
    "A somewhat unfortuanate debut," observed Sir Daniel dryly. "Who is she?"
    No one seemed to know that, though Liesel—who waited at table and liked to join in conversations—volunteered the information (unsupported by any evidence, so far as anyone could see) that she was probably American.
    After breakfast, Rudi spent a delightful morning holding court. He lay in a long chair on his balcony and almost everyone in the hotel visited him to commiserate with him and hear details of the accident.
    Elinor was, reluctantly, an exception, because there was some work sent by Kenneth from Munich, and, by some obscure action of conscience, she felt bound to attend to this first before going to see Rudi. Had Kenneth been there to say that work must come before visits, she might even have argued the point.
     
    But, as he was not, she felt bound to be specially