Young Ladies and go up to the University of Chicago. She had been
but eighteen then, but if she lived to be a hundred she never could
forget the hour she streamed with five thousand others through Hull
Gate and on to Cobb Hall to register as a student in that young,
aggressive seat of learning.

She had tried to hold herself in; not to be too "heady"; and she hoped
the lank girl beside her--it had been Lena Vroom, delegated by the
League of the Young Women's Christian Association--did not find her
rawly enthusiastic. Lena conducted her from chapel to hall, from office
to woman's building, from registrar to dean, till at length Kate stood
before the door of Cobb once more, fagged but not fretted, and able to
look about her with appraising eyes.

Around her and beneath her were swarms, literally, of fresh-faced,
purposeful youths and maidens, an astonishingly large number of whom
were meeting after the manner of friends long separated. Later Kate
discovered how great a proportion of that enthusiasm took itself out in
mere gesture and vociferation; but it all seemed completely genuine to
her that first day and she thought with almost ecstatic anticipation of
the relationships which soon would be hers. Almost she looked then to
see the friend-who-was-to-be coming toward her with miraculous
recognition in her eyes.

But she was none the less interested in those who for one reason or
another were alien to her--in the Japanese boy, concealing his
wistfulness beneath his rigid breeding; in the Armenian girl with the
sad, beautiful eyes; in the Yiddish youth with his bashful earnestness.
Then there were the women past their first youth, abstracted, and
obviously disdainful of their personal appearance; and the girls with
heels too high and coiffures too elaborate, who laid themselves open to
the suspicion of having come to college for social reasons. But all
appealed to Kate. She delighted in their variety--yes, and in all these
forms of aspiration. The vital essence of their spirits seemed to
materialize into visible ether, rose-red or violet-hued, and to rise
about them in evanishing clouds.

* * * * *

She was recalled to the present by a brisk conductor who asked for her
ticket. Kate hunted it up in a little flurry. The man had broken into
the choicest of her memories, and when he was gone and she returned to
her retrospective occupation, she chanced upon the most irritating of
her recol