A customer came in, and the tragic universe dwindled to a prosaic place in which ribbons existed in unsatisfactory shades.
"Of course we must go this minute," Leah said, as Srul clanked the coins into the till. "Biela cannot ever live here with you now."
"Yes, it is better so," he assented sulkily. "Besides, you may as well know at once. I keep open on the Sabbath, and that would not have pleased Biela. That is another reason why it was best not to marry Biela. Tsirrélé doesn't seem to mind."
The very ruins of her world seemed toppling now. But this new revelation of Tsirrélé's and his own wickedness seemed only of a piece with the first—indeed, went far to account for it.
"You break the Sabbath, after all!"
He shrugged his shoulders. "We are not in Poland any longer. No dead flies here. Everybody does it. Shut the store two days a week! I should get left."
"And you bring your mother's gray hairs down with sorrow to the grave."
"My mother's gray hairs are no longer hidden by a stupid black Shaitel. That is all. I have explained to her that America is the land of enlightenment and freedom. Her eyes are opened."
"I trust to God, your father's—peace be upon him!—are still shut!" said Leah as she walked with slow steady steps into the parlour, to bear off her wounded lamb.