This appalling picture, which in justice to the young delineators must be conceded to be not in the least overdrawn, was quite enough to give pause to those impetuous and immature young Sophomores who had lacked the philosophical breadth of vision to see that Sylvia was not an isolated phenomenon, but (since her family live in La Chance) an inseparable part of her background.  After all, the sororities made no claim to be anything but social organizations.  Their standing in the college world depended upon their social background, and of course this could only be made up of a composite mingling of those of their individual members.

Fraternities did not wish to number more than sixteen or eighteen undergraduates.  That meant only four or five to be chosen from each Freshman class, and that number of “nice” girls was not hard to find, girls who were not only well dressed, and lively and agreeable in themselves, but who came from large, well-kept, well-furnished houses on the right streets of La Chance; with presentable, card-playing, call-paying, reception-giving mothers, who hired caterers for their entertainments; and respectably absentee fathers with sizable pocketbooks and a habit of cash liberality.  The social standing of the co-eds in State Universities was already precarious enough, without running the risk of acquiring dubious social connections.

If Sylvia had been a boy, it is almost certain that the deficiencies of her family would have been overlooked in consideration of her potentialities in the athletic world.  Success in athletics was to the men’s fraternities what social standing was to the girls’.  It must be remarked parenthetically that neither class of these organizations had the slightest prejudice against high scholastic standing.  On the contrary it was regarded very kindly by fraternity members, as a desirable though not indispensable addition to social standing and physical prowess.

But Sylvia was not a boy, and her fine, promising game of tennis, her excellence in the swimming-pool, and her success on the gymnasium floor and on the flying rings, served no purpose but to bring to her the admiration of the duffers among the girls, whom she despised, and the unspoken envy of the fraternity girls, whose overtures at superficial friendliness she constantly rebuffed with stern, wounded pride.

The sharpest stab to her pride came from the inevitable publicity of her ordeal.  For, though her family knew nothing of what that first year out in the world meant to her, she had not the consolation of hoping that her condition was not perfectly apparent to every one else in the college world.  At the first of the year, all gatherings of undergraduates not in fraternities hummed and buzzed with speculations about who would or would not be “taken” by the leading fraternities.  For every girl who was at all possible, each day was a long suspense, beginning in hope and ending in listlessness; and for Sylvia