Italian humanity, who looked in his little shop and on the prosaic
pavement of Prytania Street somewhat as Hercules might seem in a modern
drawing-room. You instinctively thought of wild mountain-passes, and
the gleaming dirks of bandit contadini in looking at him. What his
last name was, no one knew. Someone had maintained once that he had
been christened Antonio Malatesta, but that was unauthentic, and as
little to be believed as that other wild theory that her name was Mary.

She was meek, pale, little, ugly, and German. Altogether part of his
arms and legs would have very decently made another larger than she.
Her hair was pale and drawn in sleek, thin tightness away from a
pinched, pitiful face, whose dull cold eyes hurt you, because you knew
they were trying to mirror sorrow, and could not because of their
expressionless quality. No matter what the weather or what her other
toilet, she always wore a thin little shawl of dingy brick-dust hue
about her shoulders. No matter what the occasion or what the day, she
always carried her knitting with her, and seldom ceased the incessant
twist, twist of the shining steel among the white cotton meshes. She
might put down the needles and lace into the spool-box long enough to
open oysters, or wrap up fruit and candy, or count out wood and coal
into infinitesimal portions, or do her housework; but the knitting was
snatched with avidity at the first spare moment, and the worn, white,
blue-marked fingers, half enclosed in kid-glove stalls for protection,
would writhe and twist in and out again. Little girls just learning to
crochet borrowed their patterns from Tony's wife, and it was considered
quite a mark of advancement to have her inspect a bit of lace done by
eager, chubby fingers. The ladies in larger houses, whose husbands
would be millionaires some day, bought her lace, and gave it to their
servants for Christmas presents.

As for Tony, when she was slow in opening his oysters or in cooking his
red beans and spaghetti, he roared at her, and prefixed picturesque
adjectives to her lace, which made her hide it under her apron with a
fearsome look in her dull eyes.

He hated her in a lusty, roaring fashion, as a healthy beefy boy hates
a sick cat and torments it to madness. When she displeased him, he
beat her, and knocked her frail form on the floor. The children could
tell when this had happened. Her eyes would be red, and there would be
blue marks on her fa