Kate Clephane, while the music immobilized the groups scattered about the great shadowy room, found herself scanning them with a fresh intensity of attention. She no longer thought of herself as an object of curiosity to any of these careless self-engrossed young people; she had learned that a woman of her age, however conspicuous her past, and whatever her present claims to notice, is fated to pass unremarked in a society where youth so undisputedly rules. The discovery had come with a slight shock; then she blessed the anonymity which made observation so much easier.
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.