Still Lena did not fling wide the door.
"Oh, Kate!" she said vaguely, in a voice that seemed to drift from a Maeterlinckian mist. "How are you?"
"Pretty sulky, thank you. Why don't you open the door, girl?"
At that Lena drew back; but she was obviously annoyed. Kate stepped into the bare, unkempt room. Remnants of a miserable makeshift meal were to be seen on a rickety cutting-table; the bed was unmade; and on the desk, in the center of the room, a drop-lamp with a leaking tube polluted the air. There was a formidable litter of papers on a great table, and before it stood a swivel chair where Lena Vroom had been sitting preparing for her degree.
Kate deliberately took this all in and then turned her gaze on her friend.
"What's the use, girl?" she demanded with more than her usual abruptness. "What are you doing it all for?"
Lena threw a haggard glance at her.
"We won't talk about that," she said in that remote, sunken voice. "I haven't the strength to discuss it. To be perfectly frank, Kate, you mustn't visit me now. You see, I'm studying night and day for the inquisition."
"The--"
"Yes, inquisition. You see, it isn't enough that my thesis should be finished. I can't get my degree without a last, terrible ordeal. Oh, Kate, you can't imagine what it is like! Girls who have been through it have told me. You are asked into a room where the most important members of the faculty are gathered. They sit about you in a semicircle and for hours they hurl questions at you, not necessarily questions relating to anything you have studied, but inquiries to test your general intelligence. It's a fearful experience."