subject far too sacred for discussion, evidently. He merely snapped back
stiffly that he expected to be pledged to another fraternity sometime
during the day, and that he did not care to hurt his chances by talking
too freely. It made me see the secretiveness of the system from another
angle.

I received no more invitations to lunch. I contented myself henceforth
with a humble sandwich and glass of milk at the "Commons" eating hall.
It was galling to see classmates being escorted across the campus to the
fraternity houses, to overhear them accepting invitations to theater in
the evening, to watch the process of their conversion to this fraternity
or that one. It was like being in a bustling crowd with hands tied and
mouth gagged--and the sullen rage of a disappointed boyhood in my heart.

Aunt Selina did not know how to comfort me. I think she tried to, in her
superfluous way. At first she wanted to make light of the fraternities,
gibing at them whenever opportunity arose at the dinner table. But she
did not feel lightly about it--and her disappointment was too great to
be laughed away. She still had a dim suspicion that I had made some
fearful misstep--had brought the failure on myself. And so, after a
while, she kept silent on the subject, and would not speak of it at all.
But her silence was more harshly eloquent than all her foolish talk had
been.

It seems that Paul Fleming, a nephew of Mrs. Fleming-Cohen, had
belonged to a fraternity at college; and Mrs. Fleming-Cohen was always
alluding to it, as if it gave her a social security which my own aunt
could never attain. Aunt Selina wanted me to make a fraternity to prove
to Mrs. Fleming-Cohen how easy a matter it was. She had implied as much,
when we had first come back from the country.

Our life together as days went by, seemed to be going peacefully and
smoothly into some sort of a makeshift groove. I knew well enough that
she and I would never grow to be genuinely fond of each other. Our aims
were different; and the beginning of college had given me some inkling
of what my aims were going to be. I was only eighteen, to be sure; but I
was older, more settled than most youths of twenty or more. I blamed
myself a little for my impatience with her, for my hasty conclusions
concerning those friends of hers who came up from Washington square to
eat her meals and to fill her with senseless chatter of art and
literature. And yet I could not help loathing them. Wheneve