It didn’t; he saw nothing in this splendid woman to take him back to the starveling waif whom Pate and he adopted or to the crude, if physically more developed, girl he had seen on one or two later occasions at Staithley. Mary relished his bewilderment: if Rupert made seriously the point against going to Staithley that she was Bradshaw, here was apt confirmation of her reply that nobody would know her. Tom Bradshaw saw her in clogs and shawl and did not know her. She hummed a bar or two of “Lead Kindly Light.” “Mary Ellen!” he cried. “Yes, I ought to have seen it. But Lady Hepplestall to Mary Ellen Bradshaw. It’s a long way to look.” “And you don’t much care to look? Not at that thankless girl who bolted.” But she was Lady Hepplestall and she was the artist, yes, by God, the artist, who had gripped him magically five minutes ago. He could not see her as a Bradshaw. “You’ve traveled far since then,” he said ungrudgingly. “I’m proud I was in at the start.” “I wrote to you,” she said, “because I wanted help. I don’t know why it came to me that you were the one person who could help and even when I wrote I saw no reason in it. No reason at all. Instinct, perhaps. We’re both Bradshaws, and he’s a Hepplestall, but I’m not pretending that I care about this thing except as it concerns my husband. I do think it concerns a lot of other people, but I don’t care for them. I don’t care if it’s good or bad for them, and this is just a matter between my husband and myself. You see how little reason I have to suppose that you’ll do anything.” “The way you’re putting it is that I’m to interfere between man and wife. That’s a mug’s game. But you can go on. I’m here to hear.” “If I knew that mine was just a war marriage, I think I’d kill myself. It isn’t yet, but he’s in danger, and he can be saved. It’ll save him if he’ll go to Staithley and take up his work.” “Hasn’t he yet?” “No: he’s killing time in London.” He looked at her, wondering if he could accuse her of playing the Syren. If Mary Ellen piped, a man would dance to her tune and small blame to him either; but he couldn’t assume that she was holding Rupert in London when it was she who saw salvation for him in Staithley. If he had to take a side, he took hers so far as to say, “A work-shy Hepplestall is something new.” “You’re thinking that it’s my fault,” she said. “You’re thinking of me that first time you met Mary Ellen. You’re thinking of her ‘’A ’ate th’ ’Epplestalls.’” “I did think of it,” he admitted. “Then I thought again. He ought to be in Staithley.” “And he’s on his way there now to sell Hepplestall’s.” “What!” said Tom, rising to his feet, with his hand tugging at his collar as a flush, almost apoplectic, discolored his neck. “What! Sell Hepplestall’s!”