The eyes were this girl’s distinguishing feature. They remained so long after all her loveliness and fairness had changed and failed. They were large, blue, white-lidded, heavily fringed with lashes darker than her hair. And they looked at you, at him, at all the world and the weather, calmly, from beneath long, sweeping brows, as if these brows were the slender wings of the thoughts she had when she looked at you. This is what a girl is, and nothing more--loveliness, innocence, and the wordless sweet desire of herself. You cannot predict her. Anything may change her; one thing only is certain--she is sure to change. The woman will be profoundly different. This is why writers of mere fiction have discarded the young girl heroine. Nothing can make her interesting but a tragedy, until she develops her human perversities and attributes, which may require more years than the tale can afford. Helen walked sedately through Wiggs Street, as if every window of every house was an eye that observed her. But when she came to the end, where this street entered the public square, her gait changed, much as your voice changes inflection according to the tune you sing. This was a livelier tune now to which she walked. She stepped along briskly, prettily. Her skirts whisked, her body swayed a little as if this might turn out to be a waltz. Every shop window she passed was a mirror, in which she caught an encouraging glimpse of herself. Once she halted long enough to draw the brim of her hat forward and sidewise. Then she went on, the published truth of herself at last. And her own mother would not have known her. Few mothers, even in that prunes-and-prism period, relatively speaking, would have recognized their daughters abroad. But every man would. It is Nature having her way, you understand, and no harm done; because in the end these maidens must--and they will--take Nature, which after all is the very nearest relative of maidenhood, into their confidence and be guided by her. The First National Bank of Shannon was no great institution. Still it was modestly conspicuous. What I mean is that you could tell at a glance and from a distance that this was a bank, not a doctor’s office, by the tall cement columns in front, the only example of four-legged magnificence in the shakily diversified architecture surrounding this square. But Mr. George William Cutter would never have thought of exalting himself in a private office with a ground glass door, showing the title “President,” published on this door. He sat at a rolled-top desk in a space reserved for him to the left of the door, by a stout oaken banister which divided it from the lobby. The only distinction he permitted himself was to sit with his back to the window which looked on the square. What was more to the point he faced the long cage of the bank proper, and was always in a position to see, know or at least shrewdly infer what was going on inside and outside in the lobby.