Read To Journey Together for Free Online Page A

known more about them, but it seemed unlikely that she ever would. There would be dozens—perhaps hundreds—of these casual contacts before her adventure was finished.
    However, during the late afternoon, Elinor went and stood in the corridor for a while, partly because the scenery was more beautiful on that side and partly because she thought the Conneltons and Kenneth might like a little time to themselves, and immediately she noticed that the couple who had attracted her so much were standing there too.
    After a few minutes, the girl smiled and said
     
    something to Elinor in German.
    "I—I'm sorry. I don't speak German," Elinor said, but she smiled, because there was something so extraordinarily attractive about this girl, with her slim, indefinably elegant figure, her long, laughing eyes, and her curiously wide cheekbones.
    "Oh—I said that this is the part of the journey which always seems to drag," the girl replied in perfect English, with hardly a trace of any accent.
    "Does it?" Elinor shook her head, still smiling. "Not for me. It is the first time I have ever done it."
    "The first time!"
    "How fortunate for you." The young man also spoke almost without accent and in a charmingly friendly way. "It must be wonderful to see the world for the first time."
    "Oh, it is," Elinor assured them, wi th such fervour that they both laughed, as though they found her as intriguing as she found them.
    "And where are you going first? Munich?"
    "Only for an overnight stop. Then we go on to Ehrwald, which is a little place in the Austrian Tyrol."
    "Yes, I know it. We also are going there," the man said.
    "Are you?" The coincidence surprised and delighted Elinor. But she had the odd impression that the man's companion was equally surprised.
    "It's a delightful place for winter sports," the man went on. "Not too fashionable and spoilt."
    "It sounds lovely." And then, because her curiosity suddenly got the better of her, Elinor turned to the girl and said rather shyly, "Do you mind my asking what language you were talking in the dining car? I couldn't identify it at all. It—it sounded so strange. I couldn't help listening to a few words."
    They both laughed at that.
    "It was Hungarian," the girl told her.
    "Oh, then—you're Hungarian?"
     
    "No, not really. We're Austrian, but we had a Hungarian grandmother and spent quite a lot of our childhood in Hungary. When my brother and I want to talk without being overheard we usually speak in Hungarian. It's a fairly safe bet that no one round will understand, even in a continental dining car."
    "Nowadays it is," her brother amended rather bitterly. "Most Hungarians are securely fastened away behind the Iron Curtain."
    "Oh." Elinor looked startled. She had heard these expressions before, of course, and vaguely accepted their tragic meaning. But she had never expected to talk to people to whom they were personal facts—part of the pattern of their own lives.
    She would have liked to go on talking to the handsome couple, who seemed to her like people in a book. But just then Lady Connelton drew back the door of their compartment and glanced out into the corridor for her.
    "I must go now." Elinor smiled a regretful goodbye at her companions.
    "Perhaps we shall meet in Ehrwald," the man said with a little bow. And before she could stop herself Elinor replied sincerely, "Oh, I hope so!"
    It was just after six-thirty when the train at last entered the big, well-rebuilt station of Munich and their long day's journey was at an end. By now, even Elinor was willing to call a halt, for it had been too dark to see anything from the windows during the last hour, and she was eager for her first night in a foreign city.
    In the crowd which poured out of the train she caught sight for a moment of the brother and sister who had spoken to her, and was pleased that they both waved before going off in the wake of their porter.
    Taxis seemed to be a great deal smaller and more cramped than in London, and as