“It’s all very well to talk, Kate, when you have a home waiting for you.  You’re the kind that always has a place.  If it wasn’t your father’s house it would be some other man’s—­Ray McCrea’s, for example.  As for me, I’m lucky to have acquired even a habit—­and that’s what college is with me—­since I’ve no home.”

Kate Barrington turned understanding and compassionate eyes upon her friend.  She had seen her growing a little thinner and more tense everyday; had seen her putting on spectacles, and fighting anaemia with tonics, and yielding unresistingly to shabbiness.  Would she always be speeding breathlessly from one classroom to another, palpitantly yet sadly seeking for the knowledge with which she knew so little what to do?

The train came thundering in—­they were waiting for it at one of the suburban stations—­and there was only a second in which to say good-bye.  Lena, however, failed to say even that much.  She pecked at Kate’s cheek with her nervous, thin lips, and Kate could only guess how much anguish was concealed beneath this aridity of manner.  Some sense of it made Kate fling her arms about the girl and hold her in a warm embrace.

“Oh, Lena,” she cried, “I’ll never forget you—­never!”

Lena did not stop to watch the train pull out.  She marched away on her heelless shoes, her eyes downcast, and Kate, straining her eyes after her friend, smiled to think there had been only Lena to speed her drearily on her way.  Ray McCrea had, of course, taken it for granted that he would be informed of the hour of her departure, but if she had allowed him to come she might have committed herself in some absurd way—­said something she could not have lived up to.

* * * * *

As it was, she felt quite peaceful and more at leisure than she had for months.  She was even at liberty to indulge in memories and it suited her mood deliberately to do so.  She went back to the day when she had persuaded her father and mother to let her leave the Silvertree Academy for Young Ladies and go up to the University of Chicago.  She had been but eighteen then, but if she lived to be a hundred she never could forget the hour she streamed with five thousand others through Hull Gate and on to Cobb Hall to register as a student in that young, aggressive seat of learning.

She had tried to hold herself in; not to be too “heady”; and she hoped the lank girl beside her—­it had been Lena Vroom, delegated by the League of the Young Women’s Christian Association—­did not find her rawly enthusiastic.  Lena conducted her from chapel to hall, from office to woman’s building, from registrar to dean, till at length Kate stood before the door of Cobb once more, fagged but not fretted, and able to look about her with appraising eyes.