It wasn’t he who was failing’ her, it was herself who must, pat upon their incomparable moment, be criticizing him because he was not miraculous but practical. And this was thought, a sickly thing, when her business was to feel, it was opposition when her business was surrender. The wild thing was the right thing now. She purged herself of thought. “Yes,” she said. She was to marry. Marry. And then he would go back to France; but first he was to find comfort in her arms. CHAPTER VIII--THE REGENCY THE rigorous theory that a Hepplestall was instantly prepared at the word of command to go to the ends of the earth in the interests of the firm was, in practice, softened by expediency. They did not, for instance, recall their manager at Calcutta or Rio and expect him to fill a home berth as aptly as a man who had not spent half a lifetime in familiarizing himself with special foreign conditions; they used their man-power with discretion and humanity, and there seemed nothing harsh in expecting William Hepplestall, chief of their Manchester offices, to remove to Staithley when he became the acting Head. William was a man who, in other circumstances, would have deserved the epithet “worthy,” perhaps with its slightly mocking significance emphasized by a capital W. A “Worthy” has solid character bounded by parochial imagination; and William rose, but only by relentless effort, to thinking in the wide-world terms of trade imposed upon the chief of Hepplestal’s Manchester warehouse. He was masterly in routine; under Sir Philip, a trusted executant of that leader’s conceptions; and since he bore his person with great dignity, he cut a figure ambassadorial, impressive, fit representative in Manchester of the Hepplestalls who took the view of that city that it was an outpost--their principal outpost--of Staithley Bridge. Probably Sir Philip, had he been alive, would have prevented William’s promotion; but Sir Philip had died suddenly, without chance to nominate a successor who, most likely, would have been unobvious and, most certainly, the best. And even Sir Philip would have saluted ungrudgingly the spirit, humble yet resolute, in which William accepted his responsibility. The Board, weakened in personnel by the war, did, as Boards do, the obvious thing, and were very well satisfied with the wisdom of their choice.