nnocently asked her mother some ten years ago what was a drunken
reinhardt. The oldest daughter of the professor of European History
was almost precisely Sylvia's age, but now, when Sylvia was laboring
over her books in the very beginning of her college life, Eleanor
Hubert was a finished product, a graduate of an exclusive, expensive
girls' boarding-school in New York, and a that-year's debutante in La
Chance society. Her name was constantly in the items of the society
columns, she wore the most profusely varied costumes, and she
drove about the campus swaying like a lily beside the wealthiest
undergraduate. Sylvia's mind was naturally too alert and vigorous, and
now too thoroughly awakened to intellectual interests, not to seize
with interest on the subjects she studied that year; but enjoy as much
as she tried to do, and did, this tonic mental discipline, there were
many moments when the sight of Eleanor Hubert made her wonder if after
all higher mathematics and history were of any real value.

During this wretched year of stifled unhappiness, she not only studied
with extreme concentration, but, with a healthy instinct, spent a
great deal of time in the gymnasium. It was a delight to her to be
able to swim in the winter-time, she organized the first water-polo
team among the co-eds, and she began to learn fencing from the
Commandant of the University Battalion. He had been a crack with the
foils at West Point, and never ceased trying to arouse an interest in
what seemed to him the only rational form of exercise; but fencing at
that time had no intercollegiate vogue, and of all the young men and
women at the State University, Sylvia alone took up his standing offer
of free instruction to any one who cared to give the time to learn;
and even Sylvia took up fencing primarily because it promised to give
her one more occupation, left her less time for loneliness. As it
turned out, however, these lessons proved far more to her than a
temporary anodyne: they brought her a positive pleasure. She delighted
the dumpy little captain with her aptness, and he took the greatest
pains in his instruction. Before the end of her Freshman year she
twice succeeded in getting through his guard and landing a thrust on
his well-rounded figure; and though to keep down her conceit he told
her that he must be losing, along with his slenderness, some of his
youthful agility, he confessed to his wife that teaching Miss Marshall
was the best fu