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 by the select and having been met and talked with, had been passed by as not wanted.

Naturally it was easy for a delicate situation to arise between these groups; naturally the girls, who had been ignored, became sensitive before the girls who had been preferred. Some of the more sensitive left college, Fidelia knew; some simply endured; but others, and often the frailest and most sensitive, "fought back." And Fidelia understood that this was what Dorothy Hess was doing when she was overworking herself to stand at the top of every class. Disregarded by the sorority girls, she determined to prove herself as good or better than they; and, if she could not make them give her a sorority pin, she would win from them the prize of scholarship—the key of Phi Beta Kappa—with which the faculty decorated the honor students of the class.

Fidelia appreciated that Miss Lacey coveted Phi Beta Kappa but probably would not get it, while Dorothy Hess was sure to; reference to that fact gave the opposite girl a certain satisfaction; yet it seemed to give Dorothy none.

Fidelia felt impulsively for Dorothy and she clasped one of Dorothy's thin, tense hands under the table.

"What's your major?" Fidelia asked, taking up the vernacular for discussing classwork which she had dropped the year and a half ago.

"History; I love it."

"So do I," said Fidelia. "Music and history are what I'm here for."

A sorority girl at the other end of the table smiled at nothing at all unless it was at this protestation of