About this time Kate was invited to become a resident of Hull House. She was touched and complimented, but, with a loyalty for which there was, perhaps, no demand, she remained faithful to her friends at the Caravansary. She was loath to take up her residence with a group which would have too much community of interest. The ladies at Mrs. Dennison's offered variety. Life was dramatizing itself for her there. In Honora and Marna and Mrs. Barsaloux and those quiet yet intelligent gentlewomen, Mrs. Goodrich and Mrs. Applegate, in the very servants whose pert individualism distressed the mid-Victorian Mrs. Dennison, Kate saw working those mysterious world forces concerning which she was so curious. The frequent futility of Nature's effort to throw to the top this hitherto unutilized feminine force was no less absorbing than the success which sometimes attended the impulsion. To the general and widespread convulsion, the observer could no more be oblivious than to an earthquake or a tidal wave. VIII Kate had not seen Lena Vroom for a long time, and she had indefinitely missed her without realizing it until one afternoon, as she was searching for something in her trunk, she came across a package of Lena's letters written to her while she was at Silvertree. That night at the table she asked if any one had seen Lena recently. "Seen her?" echoed David Fulham. "I've seen the shadow of her blowing across the campus. She's working for her doctor's degree, like a lot of other silly women. She's living by herself somewhere, on crackers and cheese, no doubt." "Would she really be so foolish?" cried Kate. "I know she's devoted to her work, but surely she has some sense of moderation." "Not a bit of it," protested the scientist. "A person of mediocre attainments who gets the Ph.D. bee in her bonnet has no sense of any sort. I see them daily, men and women,--but women particularly,--stalking about the grounds and in and out of classes, like grotesque ghosts. They're staggering under a mental load too heavy for them, and actually it might be a physical load from its effects. They get lop-sided, I swear they do, and they acquire all sorts of miserable little personal habits that make them both pitiable and ridiculous. For my part, I believe the day will come when no woman will be permitted to try for the higher degrees till her brain has been scientifically tested and found to be adequate for the work." "But as for Lena," said Kate, "I thought she was quite a wonder at her lessons." "Up to a certain point," admitted Fulham, "I've no doubt she does very well. But she hasn't the capacity for higher work, and she'll be the last one to realize it. My advice to you, Miss Barrington, is to look up your friend and see what she is doing with herself. You haven't any of you an idea of the tragedies of the classroom, and I'll not tell them to you. But they're serious enough, take my word for it." "Yes, do look her up, Kate," urged Honora.