I answered frankly enough: "I don't know. It's there--and I can't tell you what it is. Ever since I've been living among you I've felt how much we resemble each other--what a difference. I think--mind you, I only think--that what it consists in is a sense of the _comme il faut_. We're simpler than you; and less intellectual; and poorer, of course; and less, much less, self-analytical; and yet we've got a knowledge of what's what that you couldn't command with money. None of the Brokenshires have it at all, and, as far as I can see, none of their friends. They command it with money, and the difference is like having a copy of a work of art instead of the original. It gives them the air of being--I'm using Mrs. Rossiter's word--of being produced. Now we Canadians are not produced. We just come--but we come the right way--without any hooting or tooting or beating of tin pans or self-advertisement. We just are--and we say nothing about it. Let me make an example of what Mrs. Rossiter was discussing this morning. There are lots of pretty girls in my country--as many to the hundred as you have here--but we don't make a fuss about them or talk as if we'd ordered a special brand from the Creator. We grow them as you grow flowers in a garden, at the mercy of the air and sunshine. You grow yours like plants in a hothouse, to be exhibited in horticultural shows. Please don't think I'm bragging--" He laughed aloud. "Oh no!" "Well, I'm not," I insisted. "You asked me a question and I'm trying to answer it--and incidentally to justify my own existence, which J. Howard has called into question. You've got lots to offer us, and many of us come and take it thankfully. What we can offer to you is a simpler and healthier and less self-conscious standard of life, with a great deal less talk about it--with no talk about it at all, if you could get yourselves down to that--and a willingness to be instead of an everlasting striving to become. You won't recognize it or take it, of course. No one ever does. Nations seem to me insane, and ruled by insane governments. Don't the English need the Germans, and the Germans the French, and the French the Austrians, and the Austrians the Russians, and so on? Why on earth should the foot be jealous of the nose? But there! You're simply making me say things--and laughing at me all the while--so I'm off to take my walk. We'll get even with J. Howard and all the first-class powers some day, and till then--_au revoir_." I had waved my hand to him and gone some paces into the fog that had begun to blow in when he called to me. "Wait a minute. I've something to tell you." I turned, without going back. "I'm--I'm leaving." I was so amazed that I retraced a step or two toward him. "What?" His smile underwent a change. It grew frozen and steely instead of being bright with a continuous play suggesting summer lightning, which had been its usual quality.