“Oh,” said Kate, “you mustn’t expect me to tell my story.  I’m different from you.  I’m not born for anything in particular—­I’ve no talents to point out my destiny.  I keep being surprised and frustrated.  It looks to me as if I were bound to make mistakes.  There’s something wrong with me.  Sometimes I think that I’m not womanly enough—­that there’s too much of the man in my disposition, and that the two parts of me are always going to struggle and clash.”

Chairs were being drawn up to the table.

“Come!” called Dr. von Shierbrand.  “Can’t you young ladies take time enough off to eat?”

He looked ready for conversation, and Kate went smilingly to sit beside him.  She knew he expected women to be amusing, and she found it agreeable to divert him.  She understood the classroom fag from which he was suffering; and, moreover, after all those austere meals with her father, it really was an excitement and a pleasure to talk with an amiable and complimentary man.

VI

“We’re to have a new member in the family, Kate,” Honora said one morning, as she and Kate made their way together to the Caravansary.  “It’s my cousin, Mary Morrison.  She’s a Californian, and very charming, I understand.”

“She’s to attend the University?”

“I don’t quite know as to that,” admitted Honora, frowning slightly.  “Her father and mother have been dead for several years, and she has been living with her brother in Santa Barbara.  But he is to go to the Philippines on some legal work, and he’s taking his family with him.  Mary begs to stay here with me during his absence.”

“Is she the sort of a person who will need a chaperon?  Because I don’t seem to see you in that capacity, Honora.”

“No, I don’t know that I should care to sit against the wall smiling complacently while other people were up and doing.  I’ve always felt I wouldn’t mind being a chaperon if they’d let me set up some sort of a workshop in the ballroom, or even if I could take my mending, or a book to read.  But slow, long hours of vacuous smiling certainly would wear me out.  However, I don’t imagine that Mary will call upon me for any such service.”

“But if your cousin isn’t going to college, and doesn’t intend to go into society, how will she amuse herself?”

“I haven’t an idea—­not an idea.  But I couldn’t say no to her, could I?  I’ve so few people belonging to me in this world that I can’t, for merely selfish reasons, bear to turn one of my blood away.  Mary’s mother and my mother were sisters, and I think we should be fond of each other.  Of course she is younger than I, but that is immaterial.”

“And David—­does he like the idea?  She may be rather a fixture, mayn’t she?  Haven’t you to think about that?”

“Oh, David probably won’t notice her particularly.  People come and go and it’s all the same to him.  He sees only his great problems.”  Honora choked a sigh.