their salt were.

Above all she was stung into a sort of speechless rage by her
impotence to do anything to regain the decent minimum of personal
dignity which she felt was stripped from her by this constant play of
bald speculation about whether she would or would not be considered
"good enough" to be invited into a sorority. If only something
definite would happen! If there were only an occasion on which
she might in some way proudly proclaim her utter indifference to
fraternities and their actions! If only the miserable business were
not so endlessly drawn out! She threw herself with a passionate
absorption into her studies, her music, and her gymnasium work,
cut off both from the "elect" and from the multitude, a proudly
self-acknowledged maverick. She never lacked admiring followers among
less brilliant girls who would have been adorers if she had not held
them off at arm's length, but her vanity, far from being omnivorous,
required more delicate food. She wished to be able to cry aloud to her
world that she thought nothing and cared nothing about fraternities,
and by incessant inner absorption in this conception she did to
a considerable extent impose it upon the collective mind of her
contemporaries. She, the yearningly friendly, sympathetic, sensitive,
praise-craving Sylvia, came to be known, half respected and half
disliked, as proud and clever, and "high-brow," and offish, and
conceited, and so "queer" that she cared nothing for the ordinary
pleasures of ordinary girls.

This reputation for a high-browed indifference to commonplace mortals
was naturally not a recommendation to the masculine undergraduates of
the University. These young men, under the influence of reports
of what was done at Cornell and other more eastern co-educational
institutions, were already strongly inclined to ignore the co-eds as
much as possible. The tradition was growing rapidly that the proper
thing was to invite the "town-girls" to the college proms and dances,
and to sit beside them in the grandstand during football games. As
yet, however, this tendency had not gone so far but that those
co-eds who were members of a socially recognized fraternity were
automatically saved from the neglect which enveloped all other but
exceptionally flirtatious and undiscriminating girls. Each girls'
fraternity, like the masculine organizations, gave one big hop in
the course of the season and several smaller dances, as well as
lawn-parties and te