One Man's Heart

by Mary Burchell

  “Not true? How do you know?”

  “Because,” Hilma said, “it’s responsible for all the trouble. Here we planned and planned, worked out everything as coolly and sensibly as could be, agreed on the cynical, hollow value of most things, and had almost achieved brilliant marriages. And then your heart must needs get out of control and spoil everything.”

  “I like that! What happened to yours, I should like to know?”

  “Oh, that’s different.” The dimple appeared in Hilma’s cheek. “Whatever happened to my heart, I had to keep quiet. It was only you who could speak, and since you couldn’t manage your own heart—you did speak.”

  “And all our gilt-edged plans went up in smoke?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It seems a lot of trouble to be caused all by one man’s heart,” he said gravely.

  “It is.”

  “Hardly seems worth it, Lieb­ling. Perhaps you’d better break it right away before it does any more damage. You know the way.”

  “Buck!” She flung her arms round him and, laugh­ing, he caught her and covered her face with kisses.

  It was a long while before she said:

  “I suppose we ought to go now.”

  “Well, there are a lot of unpleasant things to settle,” he admitted with characteristic candour.

  “Wouldn’t it be awful if we hadn’t got each other?” she said as they made their way back to the car.

  “Managing all these ghastly re-arrangements, with everyone disapproving, I mean?”

  “Quite unbearable, darling, except that, if we hadn’t got each other, we should not be doing this absurd and wonderful thing at all. We should be getting comfortably tied up to much more suitable people.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  He turned the car, and they started for home again.

  After a while she said regretfully:

  “I’ll hate parting with this car, won’t you?”

  “Hate it,” he agreed. “I shall hate parting with every single thing I’m used to, as a matter of fact, because, as we once observed, we’re the kind of peo­ple who like eating our cake and still having it.”

  She laughed.

  “Funny we’re both so calm about it.”

  “Not at all funny,” he assured her. “We’ve merely made up our minds with our usual inflexibility of purpose.”

  “Perhaps. No one seeing us at this moment could imagine we were on the edge of a very frightening and delightful precipice. They’d take us for a prosperous young couple without a care in the world.”

  “Instead of what we really are.” He smiled thought­fully ahead. “A couple of adventurers, setting out on a tremendous adventure.”