“Well,” she said, hinting a gulf impassable between North and South, “I’m a London actress.” “That’s the miracle of it,” he said. “Lancashire’s an old slag-heap of a county and one couldn’t be proud of it. Only, by Jove, I am, since hearing you. It’s queer, but when you spoke Lancashire it was as if I met an old friend I hadn’t seen for a long time. I know it’s awful cheek, Miss Arden, but it seemed to put me on an equality with you.” She did not know he was a Hepplestall, she missed the poignant irony of their identities, but when Sir Rupert haltingly told her that it was “awful cheek” in him to feel on an equality with the exalted Mary Ellen Bradshaw, she had, unusually, the thought that she ought to check this absurd diffidence by blurting out that she learned her Lancashire on Staithley Streets, that she was not acting but was the real, raw thing. It was not often, these days, that Mary blushed to accept homage. She hadn’t put herself, the times, the strange perverted times, had put her on a pinnacle and, being there, she did what men seemed gratified that she should do, she looked down on them. But because she kept her head, she had not resented, she had welcomed, the one or two occasions when she had been made to feel ashamed. There was a man, now dead, whom she recalled because Rupert was making her in the same way look at herself through a diminishing-glass. He had, unlike the most, talked to her of the things they were doing over there: he had told her in a matter-of-fact way of their daily life and she had made comparisons with hers, she had dwindled to her true dimensions. And Rupert by means she couldn’t analyze was giving a similar, salutary experience. She felt shrunken before him and was happy to shrink. Derek’s formula for the correct welcome of a fighting soldier on leave included supper at a night club, and they were wasting time on the impossible woman. “I expect you want to turn us out so that you can dress,” he cut in. “Oh!” cried Rupert, alarmed at the idea of going so pat upon their coming. “But--yes, I suppose you must. Only I--” he took courage, if it wasn’t desperation, in both hands and added, “Will you lunch with me to-morrow at the Carlton?” She pretended to consult a full engagement-book. “I might just manage it,” she grudged defensively. Though he shrank her and she realized being shrunk by him, he was not to think that lunch with Mary Arden was less than a high privilege. He took that view himself. “I shall be greatly honored,” he said sincerely: then Derek hustled him away, but not to the night club. Rupert resisted that anti-climax, he who had held Mary’s hand in his, “But I’m so grateful to you, Derek,” he emphasized. “Are you? Then don’t be ungrateful if I tell you that no one’s quite sane on leave,” and sane or not, Rupert went to bed in the elated mood of a man who knows he has created something. “Like a hen clucking over an egg,” was Derek’s private-comment on his friend.