  The ability of the Smaller Alignment Index (SALI) to distinguish chaotic from
ordered motion, has been demonstrated recently in several
publications.\cite{Sk01,GRACM} Basically it is observed that in chaotic regions
the SALI goes to zero very rapidly, while it fluctuates around a nonzero value
in ordered regions. In this paper, we make a first step forward explaining
these results by studying in detail the evolution of small deviations from
regular orbits lying on the invariant tori of an {\bf integrable} 2D
Hamiltonian system. We show that, in general, any two initial deviation vectors
will eventually fall on the ``tangent space'' of the torus, pointing in
different directions due to the different dynamics of the 2 integrals of
motion, which means that the SALI (or the smaller angle between these vectors)
will oscillate away from zero for all time.
