"She's got Phi Beta Kappa so cinched that it's practically lying in her lap," the other girl continued with a sharpness of emphasis just on the edge of a taunt.
Fidelia did not feel this meant for her; and, indeed, the girl opposite glanced at Edith Lacey as she spoke. Fidelia discreetly kept silent; the others at the table were still for the moment for they were conscious of a delicate situation; and Fidelia could guess what it was.
Miss Lacey, who evidently did not like Fidelia Netley, was a sorority girl; Dorothy Hess and the girl opposite were not. In this house of fourteen girls, besides Fidelia, there were eight who wore on their blouses the pin of one or another of the college sororities; six girls wore no emblem at all. The fourteen had been coming to these same tables three times a day, they had been rooming side by side and exchanging a dozen times a day the little courtesies which Fidelia had overheard that morning; yet if ever a house was set against itself, in secret bitterness and hidden soreness of soul, this house of fifteen girls was so divided. For here were eight marked by the gold and jeweled symbols of approval by their collegemates; here were eight who bore on their blouses the proof that others had welcomed them at the university, had found them delightful and desirable and so had initiated them into the elect band who called each other "sister." And here were six who, willingly or without their will, but by the mere fact of their presence in college, had offered themselves for this same approval and election, but who, having been seen
