Over the shops there was a high brick building, a concert-hall.  You could hear the soft, dreamy air floating down from it, made vocal into a wordless love and pathos.  Adam forgot the splendors of the window, listening; his heart throbbed full under his thin coat; it ached with an infinite tenderness.  The poor old cobbler’s eyes filled with tears:  he could have taken Jesus and the great world all into his arms then.  How loving and pure it was, the world!  Christ’s footsteps were heard.  The eternal stars waited above; there was not a face in the crowd about him that was not clear and joyous.  These delicate, pure women flitting past him up into the lighted hall,—­it made his nerves thrill into pleasure to look at them.  Jesus’ world!  His creatures.

He put his hand into the basket, and shyly took out a bunch of flowers he had bought,—­real flowers, tender, sweet-smelling little things.  Wouldn’t Jinny wonder to find them on her bureau in the morning?  Their fragrance, so loving and innocent, filled the frosty air, like a breath of the purity of this Day coming.  Just as he was going to put them back carefully, a hand out of the crowd caught hold of them, a dirty hand, with sores on it, and a woman thrust her face from under her blowzy bonnet into his:  a young face, deadly pale, on which some awful passion had cut the lines; lips dyed scarlet with rank blood, lips, you would think, that in hell itself would utter a coarse jest.

“Give ’em to me, old cub!” she said, pulling at them.  “I want ’em for a better nor you.”

“Go it, Lot!” shouted the boys.

He struck her.  A woman?  Yes; if it had been a slimy eel standing upright, it would have been less foul a thing than this.

“Damn you!” she muttered, chafing the hurt arm.  Whatever words this girl spoke came from her teeth out,—­seemed to have no meaning to her.

“Let’s see, Lot.”

She held out her arm, and the boy, a black one, plastered it with grime from the gutter.  The others yelled with delight.  Adam hurried off.  A pure air?  God help us!  He threw the flowers into the gutter with a bitter loathing. Her fingers would be polluted, if they touched them now.  He would not tell her of this:  he would cut off his hand rather than talk to her of this,—­let her know such things were in the world.  So pure and saintly she was, his little wife! a homely little body, but with the cleanest, most loving heart, doing her Master’s will humbly.  The cobbler’s own veins were full of Scotch blood, as pure indignant as any knight’s of the Holy Greal.  He wiped his hand, as though a leper had tainted it.