Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers Page B

another. He was lonely, too.
    We danced together every night. We went for long drives together and he told
    me al about his sad life. We were both exiles in our own way.’
    ‘Oh yes – he came from Russia.’
    ‘Yes, as a tiny boy. Poor little soul. He was realy a prince, you know – but
    he never liked to say too much about that. Just a hint here and there. He felt it
    very much, being reduced to being a professional dancer. I told him – when we
    got to know one another better – that he was a prince in my heart now, and he
    said that that was better to him than an Imperial crown, poor boy. He loved me
    terribly. He quite frightened me sometimes. Russians are so passionate, you
    know.’

    ‘Of course, of course,’ said Harriet. ‘You didn’t have any misunderstanding
    or anything that might have led him—?’
    ‘Oh, no ! We were too marvelously at one together. We danced together
    that last night, and he whispered to me that there was a great and wonderful
    change coming into his life. He was al eagerness and excitement. He used to
    get terribly excited over the least little thing, of course – but this was a real, big
    excitement and happiness. He danced so wonderfuly that night. He told me it
    was because his heart was so ful of joy that he felt as if he was dancing on air.
    He said: “I may have to go away tomorrow – but I can’t tel you yet where or
    why.” I didn’t ask him anything more, because that would have spoilt it, but
    naturaly I knew what he meant. He had been getting the licence, and we should
    be married in a fortnight after that.’
    ‘Where were you going to be married?’
    ‘In London. In church, of course, because I think a registrar’s office is so
    depressing. Don’t you? Of course he’d have to go and stay in the parish – that
    was what he meant by going away. We didn’t want anybody here to know our
    secret beforehand, because there might have been unkind talk. You see, I’m a
    little bit older than he was, and people say such horrid things. I was a little
    worried about it myself, but Paul always said, “It is the heart that counts, Little
    Flower” – he caled me that, because my name is Flora – such a dreadful name,
    I can’t think how my poor dear parents came to choose it – “It is the heart that
    counts, and your heart is just seventeen.” It was beautiful of him, but quite true.
    I felt seventeen when I was with him.’
    Harriet murmured something inaudible. This conversation was dreadful to
    her. It was nauseating, pitiful, artificial yet horribly real; grotesquely comic and
    worse than tragic. She wanted to stop it at al costs, and she wanted at al costs
    to go on and disentangle the few threads of fact from the gaudy tangle of
    absurdity.
    ‘He had never loved anybody til he met me,’ went on Mrs Weldon. ‘There
    is something so fresh and sacred in a young man’s first love. One feels – wel,
    almost reverent. He was jealous of my former marriage, but I told him he need
    not be. I was such a child when I married John Weldon, far too young to
    realise what love meant. I was utterly unawakened til I met Paul. There had

    been other men, I don’t say there hadn’t, who wanted to marry me (I was left a
    widow very early), but they meant nothing to me – nothing at al. “The heart of
    a girl with the experience of a woman” – that was Paul’s lovely way of putting
    it. And it was true, my dear, indeed it was.’
    ‘I’m sure it was,’ said Harriet, trying to put conviction into her tone.
    ‘Paul – he was so handsome and so graceful – if you could have seen him as
    he was! And he was very modest and not the least bit spoilt, though all the
    women ran after him. He was afraid to speak to me for a long time – to tel me
    how he felt about me, I mean. As a matter of fact, I had to take the first step, or
    he never would have dared to speak, though it was quite obvious how he felt.
    In fact, though we got engaged in February, he suggested