Peter was always convinced, yielding a ready assent to all her
arguments: then he would turn his mild, cow-like regards on her: "But,
my dear, I smoke the best Partagas: they're very expensive, I assure
you."

Long ago his wife had left him to go his own way downward. As with
smoking, so with other ungodly traits and habits. She felt his
condemnation was sure. It was a case for submission at the female
prayer-meeting; bemoaning his eternal damnation became indeed a part
of her religion, but the matter was not one to render her apple-cheeks
a whit less round or her smile less placid. The mode in which Peter
earned their bread and butter interfered more with her daily comfort
and digestion. Dealing in second-hand books, half of which were
dramatic works, was a business not only irreligious, but ungenteel.
She never passed under the swinging sign over the door without feeling
that her cross was indeed heavy, and the old parlor, which had been
turned into a shop, she left to the occupancy of her husband and
Kitty.

Out of the shop, one summer afternoon, had come for an hour the
perpetual scrape, scrape of Peter's fiddle. He jumped up at
last, suddenly, bow in hand, and went to the doorstep, where his
stepdaughter sat sewing. From the words he had overheard in the next
room he was sure that the decisive hour of life had just struck for
the girl, and there she was stitching her flannel and singing about
"Alpine horns, tra-la!" She ought to have known, he thought, without
hearing. A woman ought to be of the kindred of the old seeresses,
and by the divine ichor or the animal instinct in her know when the
supreme moment of love approached.