She began talking now and then at women’s clubs and at meetings of welfare workers.  Her abrupt, picturesque way of saying things “carried,” as an actor would put it.  Her sweet, clear contralto held the ear; her aquiline comeliness pleased the eye without enticing it; her capable, fit-looking clothes were so happily secondary to her personality that even the women could not tell how she was dressed.  She was the least seductive person imaginable; and she looked so self-sufficient that it seldom occurred to any one to offer her help.  Yet she was in no sense bold or aggressive.  No one ever thought of accusing her of being any of those things.  Many loved her—­loved her wholesomely, with a love in which trust was a large element.  Children loved her, and the sick, and the bad.  They looked to her to help them out of their helplessness.  She was very young, but, after all, she was maternal.  A psychologist would have said that there was much of the man about her, and her love of the fair chance, her appetite for freedom, her passion for using her own capabilities might, indeed, have seemed to be of the masculine variety of qualities; but all this was more than offset by this inherent impulse for maternity.  She was born, apparently, to care for others, but she had to serve them freely.  She had to be the dispenser of good.  She was unconsciously on the outlook against those innumerable forms of slavishness which affection or religion gilded and made to seem like noble service.

Among those who loved her was August von Shierbrand.  He loved her apparently in spite of himself.  She did not in the least accord with his romantic ideas of what a woman should be.  He was something of a poet, and a specialized judge of poetry, and he liked women of the sort who inspired a man to write lyrics.  He had tried unavailingly to write lyrics about Kate, but they never would “go.”  He confessed his fiascoes to her.

“Nothing short of martial measures seems to suit you,” he said laughingly.

“But why write about me at all, Dr. von Shierbrand?” she inquired.  “I don’t want any one writing about me.  What I want to do is to learn how to write myself—­not because I feel impelled to be an author, but because I come across things almost every day which ought to be explained.”

“You are completely absorbed in this extraordinary life of yours!” he complained.

“Why not!” demanded Kate.  “Aren’t you completely absorbed in your life?”

“Of course I am.  But teaching is my chosen profession.”

“Well, life is my chosen profession.  I want to see, feel, know, breathe, Life.  I thought I’d never be able to get at it.  I used to feel like a person walking in a mist.  But it’s different now.  Everything has taken on a clear reality to me.  I’m even beginning to understand that I myself am a reality and that my thoughts as well as my acts are entities.  I’m getting so that I can define my own opinions.  I don’t believe there’s anybody in the city who would so violently object to dying as I would, Dr. von Shierbrand.”