?" I demanded.

"That you were--now, don't get sore, because I like Jews as much as any
folks--and I can't see why we don't take them in our fraternity. Only--"

"Only you didn't realize I was a Jew," I said hotly.

"That's it--I'm so near-sighted that I--"

I did not wait for his stammered finish. I went swiftly away and home,
my heart well-nigh bursting.

IX

MY AUNT AND I

"It isn't true," snapped my aunt, when I told her of what had happened
at the fraternity house. "I can't imagine that young gentlemen of such
an aristocratic set could act so meanly. You must have done something
wrong. You must have insulted them personally, yourself. I'll wager,
you're to blame--not they."

I was too sickened by it all to protest. I repeated to her slowly the
words of apology which the near-sighted junior had spoken to me at our
parting, and, when they did not convince her, gave up the task and went
to bed without any supper. I was old enough to have cured myself of the
habit of tears--though, as a matter of fact, no men ever do quite want
to cure themselves of it--but I remember that my pillow was damp the
next morning, and the grey, foggy sky, through the window, seemed in sad
tune with my spirits.

I dressed and went up to college, fearful to meet any of that fraternity
crowd again, wondering how they would act towards me, trying to be
indignant, but succeeding only in a shriveled self-debasement. Because I
was a Jew--that was their one and only reason for showing me the door in
so polite and gentlemanly a fashion.

But when, at the chapel entrance, I bumped into one of the pledged
freshmen, he simply did not pay any attention to me at all. He appeared
not to know me, murmured an unhurried and general, "Excuse me," and went
on. A few yards further on, I met with one of the seniors at whose
fraternity table I had been sitting the noon before. He bowed hastily
and walked past.

Neither one nor the other of them seemed to be much perturbed by the
meeting, nor to notice my own discomfiture. I could not imagine that
such incidents as mine of yesterday were common occurrences and yet they
seemed to take it so much as a matter of course.

I fought with my pride in the matter for a long while. Then, at the end
of a noon-time recitation, I spoke of it to a freshman with whom I had
struck up a friendship two days old. The friendship ended there. He
seemed scandalized at my mentioning fraternities at all: it was a