“I’d like to try you, dear if——­ Wait, Kent, wait!  Let me have my playtime, Kent.  I’ve never had a real one, you know, till now.  Let me finish college, then ask me again, will you, Kent?”

Kent jerked his head discontentedly.  “I think it would be better for us to tie to each other right now.  Please, Lydia dear!”

Lydia shook her head slowly.  “Let me have my playtime, Kent.  I don’t know that side of myself at all.”

Kent looked at the lake and at the little cave of long ago and back into the clear tender blue of Lydia’s eyes.  Then he said softly, “All right, dear!  You know best.  But will you give me just one kiss,—­for remembrance?”

“Yes,” replied Lydia, lifting her face, and Kent pulled off his cap and kissed the warm, girlish lips, tenderly, lingeringly, then, without a word, gently turned Lydia homeward.

Kent’s announcement that he had broken with Billy Norton did not amount to a great deal.  As winter came on, he and Billy met constantly at the cottage and outwardly at least, were friendly.  The commission finished its sitting and turned its findings over to Congress.  Congress instructed the District Attorney to carry the matter to the state courts.  When this had been done all the incriminated heaved a vast sigh of relief, and prepared to mark time.

To tell the truth, Lydia was not giving a great deal of thought to weighty problems, this winter.  No girl who finds herself with two young men in love with her, can give much thought to the world outside her own.  Nor did the fact that Professor Willis made a point of appearing at the cottage at least once a month detract any from her general joy in life.

She was doing well in her studies, though outside of the occasional hop she attended with Billy or Kent, she had no part in the college social life.  She was not altogether contented with the thought of preparing herself to teach.  The idea gave her no mental satisfaction.  She could not bring herself to believe that her real talents lay in that direction.  Yet, though this dissatisfaction grew as the days went on, it did not prevent her from taking a keen pleasure in the books she read and studied.

She suddenly grew ashamed of her old E. P. Roe period and developed a great avidity for Kipling and Thomas Hardy, for Wordsworth and Stephen Phillips.  To her surprise she found that Billy was more familiar with these writers than she.  Kent read newspapers and nothing else.

During all Lydia’s Junior year, but one fly appeared in her ointment.  And this, of course, was with, reference to clothes! that perennial haunting problem of Lydia’s, which only a woman who has been motherless and poverty-stricken and pretty can fully appreciate.  The latter part of February, the great college social event of the year was to come, the Junior Prom.  Lydia felt sure that either Kent or Billy would ask her to go and for this the organdy would not do.  And for this she must have a party coat.