everywhere that night--ubiquitous as the luminous mist that brooded
all over London--of which, however, she saw nothing but the glow above
the mews. John Jephson was out in the middle of all the show, drifting
about in it: he saw nothing that had pleasure in it, his heart was so
heavy. He never thought once of the Christ-child, or even of the
Christ-man, as the giver of anything. Birth is the one standing
promise-hope for the race, but for poor John this Christmas held no
promise. With all his humour, he was one of those people, generally
dull and slow--God grant me and mine such dullness and such sloth--who
having once loved, cannot cease. During the fortnight he had scarce
had a moment's ease from the sting of his Alice's treatment. The
honest fellow's feelings were no study to himself; he knew nothing but
the pleasure and the pain of them; but, I believe it was not mainly
for himself that he was sorry. Like Othello, "the pity of it" haunted
him: he had taken Alice for a downright girl, about whom there was and
could be no mistake; and the first hot blast of prosperity had swept
her away like a hectic leaf. What were all the shops dressed out in
holly and mistletoe, what were all the rushing flaming gas-jets, what
the fattest of prize-pigs to John, who could never more imagine a
spare-rib on the table between Alice and him of a Sunday? His
imagination ran on seeing her pass in her carriage, and drop him a nod
of condescension as she swept noisily by him--trudging home weary from
his work to his loveless fireside. _He_ didn't want her money!
Honestly, he would rather have her without than with money, for he now
regarded it as an enemy, seeing what evil changes it could work.
"There be some devil in it, sure!" he said to himself. True, he had
never found any in his week's wages, but he did remember once finding
the devil in a month's wages received in the lump.

As he was thus thinking with himself, a carriage came suddenly from a