But what did it all matter?  She was an exhilarating companion—­and what a contrast to poor Lena!  That night, lying in bed, Kate reproached herself for her neglect of her once so faithful friend.  Lena might be going through some severe experience, alone and unaided.  Kate determined to find out the truth, and as she had a half-holiday on Saturday, she started on her quest.

Lena, it transpired, had moved twice during the term and had neglected to register her latest address.  So she was found only after much searching, and twilight was already gathering when Kate reached the dingy apartment in which Lena had secreted herself.  It was a rear room up three flights of stairs, approached by a long, narrow corridor which the economical proprietor had left in darkness.  Kate rapped softly at first; then, as no one answered, most sharply.  She was on the point of going away when the door was opened a bare crack and the white, pinched face of Lena Vroom peered out.

“It’s only Kate, Lena!” Then, as there was no response:  “Aren’t you going to let me in?”

Still Lena did not fling wide the door.

“Oh, Kate!” she said vaguely, in a voice that seemed to drift from a Maeterlinckian mist.  “How are you?”

“Pretty sulky, thank you.  Why don’t you open the door, girl?”

At that Lena drew back; but she was obviously annoyed.  Kate stepped into the bare, unkempt room.  Remnants of a miserable makeshift meal were to be seen on a rickety cutting-table; the bed was unmade; and on the desk, in the center of the room, a drop-lamp with a leaking tube polluted the air.  There was a formidable litter of papers on a great table, and before it stood a swivel chair where Lena Vroom had been sitting preparing for her degree.

Kate deliberately took this all in and then turned her gaze on her friend.

“What’s the use, girl?” she demanded with more than her usual abruptness.  “What are you doing it all for?”

Lena threw a haggard glance at her.

“We won’t talk about that,” she said in that remote, sunken voice.  “I haven’t the strength to discuss it.  To be perfectly frank, Kate, you mustn’t visit me now.  You see, I’m studying night and day for the inquisition.”

“The—­”

“Yes, inquisition.  You see, it isn’t enough that my thesis should be finished.  I can’t get my degree without a last, terrible ordeal.  Oh, Kate, you can’t imagine what it is like!  Girls who have been through it have told me.  You are asked into a room where the most important members of the faculty are gathered.  They sit about you in a semicircle and for hours they hurl questions at you, not necessarily questions relating to anything you have studied, but inquiries to test your general intelligence.  It’s a fearful experience.”

She sank on her unmade cot, drawing a ragged sweater about her shoulders, and looked up at Kate with an almost furtive gaze.  She always had been a small, meagre creature, but now she seemed positively shriveled.  The pride and plenitude of womanhood were as far from her realization as they could be from a daughter of Eve.  Sexless, stranded, broken before an undertaking too great for her, she sat there in the throes of a sudden, nervous chill.  Then, after a moment or two, she began to weep and was rent and torn with long, shuddering sobs.