Tell him that he was ravished because she reminded him of Staithley, and he would not have denied that he was ravished but he would have denied very hotly that Staithley had anything to do with it. Suggest that he was seized and held because she spoke a dialect which was his as well as hers, and he would have denied knowledge of a single dialect word. But Rupert was born in Staithley where dialect, like smoke, is in the air and inescapable and Mary was calling to something so deep in him that he did not know he had it, his love of Lancashire covered up and locked beneath his school, Cambridge, the Army. She turned the key, she sent him back to the language he spoke in boyhood, not in the nursery or the schoolroom, but in emancipated hours in the garage and the stables where dialect prevailed. Obstinate in his creed of hatred of the Lancashire of the Hepplestalls, he did not know what she had done to him, but he felt for Mary the intimacy of old, tried acquaintanceship. He was unconscious of others on the stage, even as background: he was unconscious of being in a theater at all and sat gaping when the curtain cut him off from her and Derek began to push past him with an impatient “Buck up. Just time for a drink before they close. Always a scram in the bar. Come along.” “But,” said Rupert still sitting, still stupidly resenting the intrusion of the curtain, “but--Mary Arden.” “If that’s the trouble, I’ll take you round and introduce you afterwards. Anything, so long as we don’t miss this drink.” Derek led his friend to the bar, where there was opportunity for Rupert, amongst a thirsting thrusting mob, to revise his estimate of London manners in war-time. When they had secured whiskies, “You know her!” Rupert said, jealous for the first time of Derek’s enforced home-service. “I’ve met her once,” said Derek. “That’s a good enough basis for introducing you, to an actress. But I might as well warn you. Mary’s as good as her reputation. A lot of men have wasted time making sure of that.” “I see,” said Rupert curtly. “But you’ll introduce me.” “Yes,” said Derek, “if you insist.” He had brought Rupert to the Galaxy because it was the thing to do, just as he had met Mary for the same reason, but he resented her strangeness. To Derek an actress who was not only notoriously but actually “straight” was simply not playing the game and he was reluctant to add Rupert to the train of her exhibited and deluded admirers. Whereas Rupert would have shrunk aghast at the temerity of his thoughts if he had realized Mary as an actress and a famous one. He was, in all modesty, seeing her possessively because she and he were alone in a crowd.