“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.”
He was very patient. “My dear Miss Castleman,” he said, “it happens that I was raised in a house, and I’m used to it. And I happen to have the money—why shouldn’t I spend it?”
“You might spend it for the good of others.”
“You mean in charity? Haven’t you learned that charity never does any good?”
“Sometimes I wish that I were a man, so that I could understand these things,” exclaimed Sylvia. “But surely you might find some way of doing good with your money, instead of only harm, as at present.”
“Only harm, Miss Castleman?”
“You are spending your money setting up false ideals in your college. You are doing all in your power to make everyone who meets you, or sees you, or even knows of you, a toady or else an Anarchist. And at the same time you are killing the best things in the college.”