The Precipice | Page 2

it was, she felt quite peaceful and more at leisure than she had for
months. She was even at liberty to indulge in memories and it suited
her mood deliberately to do so. She went back to the day when she had
persuaded her father and mother to let her leave the Silvertree Academy
for 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 recollections. It concerned an episode of that same first day in
Chicago. She had grown weary with the standing and waiting, and
when Miss Vroom left her for a moment to speak to a friend, Kate had
taken a seat upon a great, unoccupied stone bench which stood near
Cobb door. Still under the influence of her high idealization of the
scene she lost herself in happy reverie. Then a widening ripple of
laughter told her that something amusing was happening. What it was
she failed to imagine, but it dawned upon her gradually that people
were looking her way. Knots of the older students were watching her;

bewildered newcomers were trying, like herself, to discover the cause
of mirth. At first she smiled sympathetically; then suddenly, with a
thrill of mortification, she perceived that she was the object of derision.
What was it? What had she done?
She knew that she was growing pale and she could feel her heart
pounding at her side, but she managed to rise, and, turning, faced a
blond young man near at hand, who had protruding teeth and grinned at
her like a sardonic rabbit.
"Oh, what is it, please?" she asked.
"That bench isn't for freshmen," he said briefly.
Scarlet submerged the pallor in Kate's face.
"Oh, I didn't know," she gasped. "Excuse me."
She moved away quickly, dropping her handbag and having to stoop
for it. Then she saw that she had left her gloves on the bench and she
had to turn back for those. At that moment Lena hastened to her.
"I'm so sorry," she cried. "I ought to have warned you about that old
senior bench."
Kate, disdaining a reply, strode on unheeding. Her whole body was
running fire, and she was furious with herself to think that she could
suffer such an agony of embarrassment over a blunder which, after all,
was trifling. Struggling valiantly for self-command, she plunged toward
another bench and dropped on it with the determination to look