of her husband's wooing. She had felt satisfaction, a mild
triumph, a gratified vanity, if you will, but that was as far as her
emotional experience had gone. After all, her career had been
marriage, and she had taken the most likely situation that had been
offered. She presumed it was the same when one graduated from business
college. You were expected to land a job and you did. Sometimes it was
a good one, and then again it wasn't. Looking back, she conceded that
her choice had been fair. Fred Starratt didn't drink to excess, he
didn't beat or swear at her, he didn't make sarcastic remarks about
her relations, or do any of the things which anyone who reads the
daily papers discovers so many men do under provocation or otherwise.
But, on the other hand, he hadn't made a fortune or bought a car or
given her any reason for feeling compensated for the lack of marital
excitement. His friends called him a nice fellow--in some ways as
damning a thing as one could say about anybody--and let it go at that.
However, Helen Starratt's vocabulary was just as limited when it came
to characterizing her conventional aims and ambitions. If,
occasionally, her speculations stirred the muddy reaches of certain
furtive desires, she took care that they did not become articulate.
This term "nice" included every desirable virtue. One married nice
men, and one lived in a nice neighborhood, and one made nice
acquaintances. In her mother's day she had heard people say:

"I believe in having the young folks identified with church work--they
meet such nice people."

And years later a friend, attempting to interest her in the activities
of a local orphan asylum, had clinched every other argument by
stating, blandly:

"You really ought to go in for it, Helen--you've no idea what nice
people you meet."

When America's entry into the war brought up the question of Red Cross
endeavor, her first thought had been:

"I really ought to do something, I suppose. And, besides, I'll meet
lots of nice people."

Well, she had met a lot of nice people, but the only fruitful yield
socially had been Mrs. Hilmer. And somehow it never occurred to Helen
to apply such a discriminating term as nice to her latest acquisition.
Mrs. Hilmer was wholesome and good hearted and a dear, and no doubt
she was nice in a negative way, but one never thought about saying so.
And Hilmer...? No, he was not what one would call a nice man, but he
was tremendously interesting and