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
other. But though she waved cheerful responses to their greetings, she
made her stride purposeful enough to discourage offers of company. They
all seemed young to her to-day. All her student activities seemed young.
As if, somehow, she had outgrown them. The feeling was none the less
real after she had laughed at herself for entertaining it.

She noticed presently that it was a good deal darker than it had any
right to be at this hour, and the sudden fall of the breeze and a
persistent shimmer of lightning supplied her with the explanation. When
she reached Forty-seventh Street, the break of the storm was obviously a
matter of minutes, so she decided to ride across to the elevated--it was
another mile, perhaps--rather than walk across as she had meant to do.
She didn't in the least mind getting wet, providing she could keep on
moving until she could change her clothes. But a ten-mile ride in the
elevated, with water squashing around in her boots and dripping out of
her hair, wasn't an alluring prospect.

She found quite a group of people waiting on the corner for a car, and
the car itself, when it came along, was crowded. So she handed her
nickel to the conductor over somebody's shoulder, and moved back to the
corner of the vestibule. It was frightfully stuffy inside and most of
the newly received passengers seemed to agree with her that the platform
was a pleasanter place to stay; which did very well until the next stop,