He need no longer weigh mere surface gentility against the stern demands of an active metabolism.

A shave cost a quarter.

Twenty cents would not buy a shave, but it would buy at the cafeteria something more needful to any one but a fop.
He saw himself in the days to come--if there were very many days to come, of which he was now not too certain--descending to the unwholesome artistic level of the elder Montague.

He would, in short, be compelled to peddle the brush.

And of course as yet it was nothing like a brush--nothing to kindle the eye of a director needing genuine brushes.
In the early morning light he fingered a somewhat gaunt chin and wondered how long "they" would require to grow.