Only--what was there to observe? Again the sameness of the American Face encompassed her with its innocent uniformity. How many of them it seemed to take to make up a single individuality! Most of them were like the miles and miles between two railway stations. She saw again, with gathering wonder, that one may be young and handsome and healthy and eager, and yet unable, out of such rich elements, to evolve a personality. Her thoughts wandered back to the shabby faces peopling her former life. She knew every seam of their shabbiness, but now for the first time she seemed to see that they had been worn down by emotions and passions, however selfish, however sordid, and not merely by ice-water and dyspepsia. “Since the Americans have ceased to have dyspepsia,” she reflected, “they have lost the only thing that gave them any expression.” Landers came up as the thought flashed through her mind, and apparently caught its reflection in her smile. “You look at me as if you’d never seen me before; is it because my tie’s crooked?” he asked, sitting down beside her. “No; your tie is absolutely straight. So is everything else about you. That’s the reason I was looking at you in that way. I can’t get used to it!” He reddened a little, as if unaccustomed to such insistent scrutiny. “Used to what?” “The universal straightness. You’re all so young and--and so regular! I feel as if I were in a gallery of marble masterpieces.” “As that can hardly apply to our features, I suppose it’s intended to describe our morals,” he said with a faint grimace. “I don’t know--I wish I did! What I’m trying to do, of course,” she added abruptly and unguardedly, “is to guess how I should feel about all these young men--if I were Anne.” She was vexed with herself that the words should have slipped out, and yet not altogether sorry. After all, one could always trust Landers to hold his tongue--and almost always to understand. His smile showed that he understood now. “Of course you’re trying; we all are. But, as far as I know, Sister Anne hasn’t yet seen any one from her tower.” A breath of relief expanded the mother’s heart. “Ah, well, you’d be sure to know--especially as, when she does, it ought to be some one visible a long way off!” “It ought to be, yes. The more so as she seems to be in no hurry.” He looked away. “But don’t build too much on that,” he added. “I learned long ago, in such matters, to expect only the unexpected.” Kate Clephane glanced at him quickly; his ingenuous countenance wore an unaccustomed shadow. She remembered that, in old days, John Clephane had always jokingly declared--in a tone proclaiming the matter to be one mentionable only as a joke--that Fred Landers was in love with her; and she said to herself that the lesson her old friend referred to was perhaps the one she had unwittingly given him when she went away with another man.