measure of comfort in her excuse; later he came to be irritated by it.
And in moments of truant self-candor he admitted he could have made
the grade with concessions to pride. There were plenty of youths who
worked their way through. But he always had moved close to the edge of
affluent circles, where he had caught the cold but disturbing glow of
their standards. He left high school with pallid ideals of gentility,
ideals that expressed themselves in his reasons for deciding to enter
an insurance office. Insurance, he argued, was a _nice_ business, one
met _nice_ people, one had _nice_ hours, one was placed in _nice_
surroundings. He had discovered later that one drew a _nice_ salary,
too. Well, at least, he had had the virtue of choosing without a very
keen eye for the financial returns.

Ten years of being married to a woman who demanded a _nice_ home and
_nice_ clothes and a circle of _nice_ friends had done a great deal
toward making him a little skeptical about the soundness of his
standards. But his moments of uncertainty were few and fleeting,
called into life by such uncomfortable circumstances as touching old
Wetherbee for money or putting his tailor off when the date for his
monthly dole fell due. He had never been introspective enough to quite
place himself in the social scale, but when, in his thought or
conversation, he referred to people of the _better class_ he
unconsciously included himself. He was not a drunken, disorderly, or
radical member of society, and he didn't black boots, or man a ship,
or sell people groceries, or do any of the things that were done in
overalls and a soft shirt, therefore it went without saying that he
belonged to the better class. That was synonymous with admitting that
one kept one's ringer nails clean and used a pocket handkerchief.

Suddenly, with the force of a surprise slap in the face, it had been