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 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.