But Kate had set her will to conquer that of her friend and Lena's hysteric opposition was no match for it. Little by little the tense form beneath the blankets relaxed. Her stormily drawn breath became more even. At last she slept, which gave Kate an opportunity to slip out to buy a new tube for the lamp and adjust it properly. She felt quite safe in lighting it, for Lena lay in complete exhaustion, and she took the liberty of looking over the clothes which were bundled into an improvised closet on the back of the door. Everything was in wretched condition. Buttons and hooks were lacking; a heap of darning lay untouched; Lena's veil, with which she attempted to hide the ruin of her hat, was crumpled into the semblance of a rain-soaked cobweb; and her shoes had gone long without the reassurance of a good blacking. Kate put some irons over the stove which served Lena as a cooking-range, and proceeded on a campaign of reconstruction. It was midnight when she finished, and she was weary and heartsick. The little, strained face on the pillow seemed to belong to one whom the furies were pursuing. Yet nothing was pursuing her save her own fanatical desire for a thing which, once obtained, would avail her nothing. She had not personality enough to meet life on terms which would allow her one iota of leadership. She was discountenanced by her inherent drabness: beaten by the limits of her capacity. When Kate had ordered the room,--scrupulously refraining from touching any of Lena's papers,--she opened the window and, putting the catch on the door, closed it softly behind her. * * * * * Kate's frequent visits to Lena, though brief, were none too welcome. Even the food she brought with her might better, in Lena's estimation, be dispensed with than that the all-absorbing reading and research should be interrupted. Finally Kate called one night to find Lena gone. She had taken her trunk and oil-stove and the overworked gas-lamp and had stolen away. To ferret her out would have been inexcusable. "It shows how changed she is," Kate said to Honora. "Fancy the old-time Lena hiding from me!" "You must think of her as having a run of fever, Kate. Whatever she does must be regarded as simply symptomatic," said Honora, understandingly. "She's really half-mad. David says the graduates are often like that--the feminine ones." Kate tried to look at it in a philosophic way, but her heart yearned and ached over the poor, infatuated fugitive. The February convocation was drawing near, and with it Lena's dreaded day of examination. The night before its occurrence, the conversation at the Caravansary turned to the candidates for the honors.