Kate saw nothing of her until the day of convocation, though she tried several times to get into communication with her.  There must have been quite two hundred figures in the line that wound before the President and the other dignitaries to receive their diplomas; and the great hall was thronged with interested spectators.  Kate could have thrilled with pride of her alma mater had not her heart been torn with sympathy for her friend whose emaciated figure looked more pathetic than ever before.  Now and then a spasmodic movement shook her, causing her head to quiver like one with the palsy and her hands to make futile gestures.  And although she was the most touching and the least joyous of those who went forward to victory, she was not, after all, so very exceptional.

Kate could not help noticing how jaded and how spent were many of the candidates for the higher degrees.  They seemed to move in a tense dream, their eyes turning neither to right nor left, and the whole of them bent on the one idea of their dear achievement.  Although there were some stirring figures among them,—­men and women who seemed to have come into the noble heritage which had been awaiting them,—­there were more who looked depleted and unfit.  It grew on Kate, how superfluous scholarship was when superimposed on a feeble personality.  The colleges could not make a man, try as they might.  They could add to the capacity of an endowed and adventurous individual, but for the inept, the diffident, their learning availed nothing.  They could cram bewildered heads with facts and theories, but they could not hold the mediocre back from their inevitable anticlimax.

“A learned derelict is no better than any other kind,” mused Kate compassionately.  She resolved that now, at last, she would command Lena’s obedience.  She would compel her to take a vacation,—­would find out what kind of a future she had planned.  She would surround her with small, friendly offices; would help her to fit herself out in new garments, and would talk over ways and means with her.

She went the next day to the room where Lena’s compassionate professors had found her that night of dread and terror before her examination.  But she had disappeared again, and the landlady could give no information concerning her.

IX

The day was set.  Marna was to sing.  It seemed to the little group of friends as if the whole city palpitated with the fact.  At any rate, the Caravansary did so.  They talked of little else, and Mary Morrison wept for envy.  Not that it was mean envy.  Her weeping was a sort of tribute, and Marna felt it to be so.

“You’re going to be wonderful,” Mary sobbed.  “The rest of us are merely young, or just women, or men.  We can’t be anything more no matter how hard we try, though we keep feeling as if we were something more.  But you’re going to sing!  Oh, Marna!”