Nan waited for each letter as if it were the next installment of a serial. She had seen Letitia through a good many such affairs, and she knew that before long her friend would stage a quarrel. It was a good way, Letty said, of finding out how much he cared; although, as a matter of fact, Nan noticed that she never precipitated it until she was sure the unfortunate man in question cared enough to be at a disadvantage. But in Roger's case, when she had said sadly, "I'm afraid, Mr. Rossiter, that this means our friendship is ended," he had answered without a word of pleading, "Yes, I'm quite sure it does." Letitia, a little startled, had asked, "What? You wish it too?" "No," he had said; "but the fact that you do ends it automatically." She had some difficulty in extricating herself from her own ultimatum. Naturally, her respect for him increased. "I'm almost glad you are not here, Nan," she wrote. "He is so honest he could not help loving your honesty. I feel as if together, somehow, you would both find me out." She inclosed a little photograph of him to show Nan what a splendid-looking person he was; but it was not his beauty she dwelt upon, but his straight, keen eyes and the fine firmness of his mouth--not the determination of the self-conscious bulldog, which so many people assume in a photograph, but just a nice steely fixity of purpose. Yes, Nan, far away in China, with plenty of leisure for reflection, found that for the first time she envied her friend. A little later a real honest quarrel was reported. Letitia, habitually unpunctual, was three-quarters of an hour late for an appointment, and he simply had not waited for her. Under her anger Nan could catch her admiration for the first man who had dared not to wait. "I explained to him that I could not help it, and all he said was: 'You could have helped it if I had been a train.' Of course, everything is over--he does not know how to behave." No letter at all came in the next mail, and the announcement of her engagement in the one following: "Fortunately--and wonderfully--mamma likes him, for, as you know, it would have been awfully hard to marry a man if she hated him." It would indeed; or, rather, Nan thought, it would have been difficult for Letitia to fall in love with a man Mrs. Lewis did not approve of, for she had a wonderful gift of phrase--just, but cruel--by which budding sentiments could be cut off as by a knife. Nan had seen her more than once prune away a growing romance from Letitia's life with a deft, hideously descriptive sentence. Each time Nan had been in complete sympathy with her.