The purpose of this ride was a definite one—that van Tuiver might find out the meaning of Sylvia’s change of mind at the dance. He propounded the question very soon; and the girl had to try to explain the state of mind in which she found herself. She would begin, she said, with the situation she had found at Harvard. Here were two groups of men, working for different ends, one desiring democracy in college life, and the other wishing to preserve the old spirit of caste. The conflict between them had become intense, and Sylvia’s sympathies were with van Tuiver’s opponents. “Tell me,” she said, “what has Harvard meant to you? What has it given you that you couldn’t have got elsewhere? Here are men from all over America, but you’ve only met one little set. All the others—whom you’re probably too refined to call ‘rough-necks’—could none of them have taught you anything?” “Perhaps they could,” he answered, “but it’s not easy to know them. If I met people promiscuously, they’d presume upon the acquaintance. I’d have no time to myself, no privacy——” He saw the scorn in Sylvia’s face. “That’s all very well,” he cried, “but you simply don’t realize! Take your own case—do _you_ meet anybody who comes along?” “I am a girl,” said Sylvia. “People seem to think it’s necessary to protect girls. But even so, I remember experiences that you might profit by. I went last year to our State University, where one of my cousins was graduating. At one of the dances I was accidentally introduced to a man, a decent fellow, whom I liked. ‘I won’t ask you to dance with me, Miss Castleman,’ he said. I asked, ‘Why not?’ and he said, ‘I’m a “goat”.’ I said, ‘I’ll dance with a goat, if he’s a good dancer,’ and so we danced. And then came my cousin. ‘Sylvia, don’t you know who the man is you were dancing with? He’s a “goat”!’ ‘I like him,’ I said, ‘and he dances as well as any of you. I shall dance with him.’ ‘But, Miss Castleman,’ they all said, ‘you’ll break up the fraternity system in the college.’ ‘What strange fraternity!’ I answered. ‘I think it needs breaking up. I’ll dance with him, and if anybody doesn’t like it, I won’t dance with _him_.’ So I had my way.” “That’s all right,” said the other. “If a pretty girl chooses to have her whim, everybody can allow for it. But if you set to work to run a college on that basis, you’d abolish social life there. Men of a certain class would simply not go where they had undesirable companionship forced upon them. Is that what you want to bring about?” Sylvia thought for a moment, and then countered, “Is the only way you can think of to avoid undesirable companionship to have a private house?” “A house?” replied van Tuiver. “Lots of people live in houses. Doesn’t your father?” “My father has a family,” said Sylvia. “You have no one but yourself—and you don’t have the house because you need it, but simply for ostentation.”