is fact had been gradual. She wasn't fully
conscious of it, even on this March morning. But something had happened
this morning that made a difference. If she'd been ascending an
imperceptible gradient for the last three months, to-day she had come to
a recognizable step up and taken it. Oddly enough, the thing had
happened back there in the class-room as she stood before the
professor's desk and caught his eye wavering between herself and the
scrawny girl who wanted to ask a question about Robespierre. There had
been more than blank helpless exasperation in that look of his, and it
had taught her something. She couldn't have explained what.

To the half-back she attributed it to the month of March. "You're
ridiculous, I'm ridiculous, he's ridiculous." That was about as well as
she could put it.

She and the half-back had walked about a hundred yards in silence. Now
they were arriving at a point where the path forked.

"You're elegant company this morning, I must say," he commented
resentfully.

Again she smiled. "I'm elegant company for myself," she said, and held
out her hand. "Which way do _you_ go?" she asked.

A minute later she was swinging along alone, her shoulders back,
confronting the warm March wind, drawing into her good deep chest, long
breaths. She had just had, psychically speaking, a birthday.

She played a wonderful game of basket-ball that afternoon.

CHAPTER II

BEGINNING AN ADVENTURE

It was after five o'clock when, at the conclusion of the game and a cold
shower, a rub and a somewhat casual resumption of her clothes, she
emerged from the gymnasium. High time that she took the quickest way of
getting home, unless she wanted to be late for dinner.

But the exhilaration of the day persisted. She felt like doing something
out of the regular routine. Even a preliminary walk of a mile or so
before she should cross over and take the elevated, would serve to
satisfy her mild hunger for adventure. And, really, she liked to be a
little late for dinner. It was always pleasanter to come breezing in
after things had come to a focus, than to idle about for half an hour in
that no-man's-land of the day, when the imminence of dinner made it
impossible to do anything but wait for it.

So, with her note-books under her arm and her sweater-jacket unfastened,
at a good four-mile swing, she started north. In the purlieus of the
university she was frequently hailed by friends of her own sex or the
o