Free To Journey Together by Mary Burchell Page B

trying not to answer my question."
    "Am I hard-headed and hard-hearted?" he repeated slowly, that slight smile of something like self-mockery just touching his handsome mouth. "I suppose I am a little of both, Elinor. And not quite enough of either."
    "And what do you mean by that, exactly?"
    "Oh, dear child! If one can be entirely hard, one can do very well for oneself, even in the world that has been left us. If one can be good and gentle and well-wishing like you, then at least the decisions are made for one. But if one is neither one thing nor the other " He broke off suddenly, frowned, then laughed and said, "Here, how did we come to talk like this, anyway?"
    "I think," Elinor said gently, "I asked you a probing question. And you were kind enough to reply quite seriously."
    "Not too seriously," he countered quickly. "You must never take anything that we—Ilsa and I—say with complete seriousness, you know."
    "But why not?"
    "Oh—" he ran a hand through his thick, dark hair, making it stand up rather boyishly—"we rather feel that anyone who takes this crazy life quite seriously must either be mad or go mad. So mostly we live and think and feel on the surface. It saves one from crashing too badly when the disasters come?"
    "But do they have to come?"
    The moment she had said that she would have liked to recall it. In some way, she knew it was the easy generalization of one who had never had to face stark disaster.
     
    But Rudi smiled at her, and again it was that smile of unusual sweetness.
    "Perhaps they don't have to come to everyone," he said, and he put out his hand and touched her cheek gently. "Never, I hope, to you. But Ilsa and I are almost the sole survivors of our family. We have seen our people, our home, our class and our country go. Better to live on the surface after that and pretend that nothing matters very much."
    "You " Elinor stared at him, and, without her even knowing it, tears filled her eyes and spilled over on to her cheeks. "You say that—that
    "Don't," he exclaimed almost roughly. "You're crying. Why are you crying?"
    She put up her hands and was surprised herself to find that her cheeks were wet.
    "I--don't know," she began. And then—"Yes, of course I do. It was because of what you said. The completeness of it. About—about everything going."
    "Oh, my child " He put out his arm and drew her to him. "Does anyone still weep for the heartache of others? How very foolish and sweet and touching of you." And then he kissed her.
    Unspeakably moved, Elinor kissed him quite naturally in return. She even hugged him for a moment in an impluse of unspoken sympathy. Neither of them noticed the slight knock on the door. And both of them started apart as they realized that someone had come into the room—a completely strange girl, who said, "Oh, excuse me—" and prepared to depart once more.
    Naturally it was Rudi who recovered first and, with sufficient presence of mind to try to make the episode seem of no special significance, he said quite calmly, "No, do come in. Were you looking for me?"
    "Yes, I—as a matter of fact, I came to make my apologies in person. I'm afraid it was I who knocked you down with my car last night."
    "O-oh." Rudi was completely himself again, and eyed the girl with a quizzical smile which had no trace of embarrassment in it, while Elinor, covered
     
    with confusion, would willingly have fled from the scene. Her more experienced companion, however, had no intention of letting her impart an air of guilt to a basically innocent occasion, and, with a slight gesture of his hand, he detained her when she would have slipped away. To the other girl he said, "Do sit down. I was told that my aggressor was a wild American girl. But now I see that she is neither wild nor, I think, American."
    "No, certainly not." The girl, who was very pretty and self-possessed, laughed too. "I had come straight out from London, and I'm afraid that, after two long days' driving, I was probably just