Blodgett College is on the edge of Minneapolis.  It is a bulwark of sound religion.  It is still combating the recent heresies of Voltaire, Darwin, and Robert Ingersoll.  Pious families in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, the Dakotas send their children thither, and Blodgett protects them from the wickedness of the universities.  But it secretes friendly girls, young men who sing, and one lady instructress who really likes Milton and Carlyle.  So the four years which Carol spent at Blodgett were not altogether wasted.  The smallness of the school, the fewness of rivals, permitted her to experiment with her perilous versatility.  She played tennis, gave chafing-dish parties, took a graduate seminar in the drama, went “twosing,” and joined half a dozen societies for the practise of the arts or the tense stalking of a thing called General Culture.

In her class there were two or three prettier girls, but none more eager.  She was noticeable equally in the classroom grind and at dances, though out of the three hundred students of Blodgett, scores recited more accurately and dozens Bostoned more smoothly.  Every cell of her body was alive—­thin wrists, quince-blossom skin, ingenue eyes, black hair.

The other girls in her dormitory marveled at the slightness of her body when they saw her in sheer negligee, or darting out wet from a shower-bath.  She seemed then but half as large as they had supposed; a fragile child who must be cloaked with understanding kindness.  “Psychic,” the girls whispered, and “spiritual.”  Yet so radioactive were her nerves, so adventurous her trust in rather vaguely conceived sweetness and light, that she was more energetic than any of the hulking young women who, with calves bulging in heavy-ribbed woolen stockings beneath decorous blue serge bloomers, thuddingly galloped across the floor of the “gym” in practise for the Blodgett Ladies’ Basket-Ball Team.

Even when she was tired her dark eyes were observant.  She did not yet know the immense ability of the world to be casually cruel and proudly dull, but if she should ever learn those dismaying powers, her eyes would never become sullen or heavy or rheumily amorous.

For all her enthusiasms, for all the fondness and the “crushes” which she inspired, Carol’s acquaintances were shy of her.  When she was most ardently singing hymns or planning deviltry she yet seemed gently aloof and critical.  She was credulous, perhaps; a born hero-worshipper; yet she did question and examine unceasingly.  Whatever she might become she would never be static.

Her versatility ensnared her.  By turns she hoped to discover that she had an unusual voice, a talent for the piano, the ability to act, to write, to manage organizations.  Always she was disappointed, but always she effervesced anew—­over the Student Volunteers, who intended to become missionaries, over painting scenery for the dramatic club, over soliciting advertisements for the college magazine.