"But there is hope for me here, with the Faculty and with books"—he choked a little over this; "a man doesn't need to go through from one to eight love-affairs."
The champion of co-education sniffed.
"Nothing was further from my thoughts," said she. "The association of men and women in an atmosphere of study does not mean sentimentality. The relation should be normal and helpful, not spoiled by extremes." Katharine had heard these views before.
"But they can't dodge the extremes, you see," persisted Pellams. "It's the place here, the walks and drives in the country and all. Your theory might work all right at a city college or even at Berkeley, but on this campus, not so!"
"The reasoning of inexperience. There are stronger interests in nature than boy-and-girl foolishness—unless one is idle. Where it results in that sort of thing, I agree that it is all wrong and prejudicial to scholarship and thoroughly unnecessary and inexcusable"—with these words a slow glance at Katharine that spoke of arguments in the past. "A man does not have to fall in love purely because he and a girl are in the country at the same time."
"But all the girls are not like you," began Pellams, and stopped at the sound of the words. They were not in the least intended to be taken as he felt that the table-full had taken them. Miss Meiggs put her fork viciously into the neglected rarebit. In the uncomfortable pause, Mrs. Perkins flutteringly passed her the cayenne pepper, but Miss Meiggs ignored the courtesy. She turned to Pellams.
"Even a love-affair," she snapped, "would benefit you more than the substitute you have chosen! You are a nice one to argue the refinement of the college girl! Are you refining yourself, your fraternity or your favorite side of the student-body by carousing at Mayfield and carrying the viciousness of that town to others where you may represent the University?"
"Oh, I say!" protested the Glee Club man, uneasily, for Grind was on the Committee; "don't be too hard on me."
"I'm sure you're unjust to Pellams," said the Chapter-mother, with a troubled look at her black lamb, who wondered what was coming: "I don't believe he——"
Miss Meiggs, peppering her rarebit deliberately, interrupted, with a little toss of the head.