During the summer vacation she kept up her practice with her father, who remembered enough of his early training in Paris to be more than a match for her, and in the autumn of her Sophomore year, at the annual Gymnasium exhibition, she gave with the Commandant a public bout with the foils in which she notably distinguished herself.  The astonished and long-continued applause for this new feature of the exhibition was a draught of nectar to her embittered young heart, but she acknowledged it with not the smallest sign of pleasure, showing an impassive face as she stood by the portly captain, slim and tall and young and haughty, joining him in a sweeping, ceremonious salute with her foil to the enthusiastic audience, and turning on her heel with a brusqueness as military as his own, to march firmly with high-held head beside him back to the ranks of blue-bloomered girls who stood watching her.

The younger girls in Alpha Kappa and Sigma Beta were seizing this opportunity to renew an old quarrel with their elders in the fraternities and were acrimoniously hoping that the older ones were quite satisfied with their loss of a brilliant member.  These accusations met with no ready answer from the somewhat crestfallen elders, whose only defense was the entire unexpectedness of the way in which Sylvia was distinguishing herself.  Who ever heard before of a girl doing anything remarkable in athletics?  And anyhow, now in her Sophomore year it was too late to do anything.  A girl so notoriously proud would certainly not consider a tardy invitation, and it would not do to run the risk of being refused.  It is not too much to say that to have overheard a conversation like this would have changed the course of Sylvia’s development, but of such colloquies she could know nothing, attributing to the fraternities, with all an outsider’s resentful overestimation of their importance, an arrogant solidarity of opinion and firmness of purpose which they were very far from possessing.

Professor and Mrs. Marshall and Lawrence and Judith, up in the front row of chairs set for the audience about the running track, followed this exploit of Sylvia’s with naively open pride and sympathy, applauding even more heartily than did their neighbors.  Lawrence, as usual, began to compose a poem, the first line of which ran,

  “Splendid, she wields her gleaming sword—­”

The most immediate result of this first public success of Sylvia’s was the call paid to Mrs. Marshall on the day following by Mrs. Draper, the wife of the professor of Greek.  Although there had never been any formal social intercourse between the two ladies, they had for a good many years met each other casually on the campus, and Mrs. Draper, with the extremely graceful manner of assurance which was her especial accomplishment, made it seem quite natural that she should call to congratulate Sylvia’s mother on the girl’s skill and beauty as shown in her prowess on the evening before.  Mrs. Marshall prided