oo--yet of men who were busy upon their Father's affairs in their
Father's house, and not upon their own. They were going from altar to
altar, speaking with their Friends at Court; and here, opposite where
she stood and peeped in the empty cold darkness, there had burned lights
before the Throne of Him Who had made Heaven and earth, and did His
Father's Will on earth as it was done in Heaven.... Forty years ago the
life of this church was rising on this very night, with a hum as of an
approaching multitude, from hour to hour, brightening and quickening as
it came, up to the glory of the Midnight Mass, the crowded church,
alight from end to end, the smell of bog and bay in the air, soon to be
met and crowned by the savour of incense-smoke; and the world of spirit,
too, quickened about them; and the angels (she thought) came down from
Heaven, as men up from the City round about, to greet Him who is King of
both angels and men.

And now, in this new England, the church, empty of the Divine Presence,
was emptying, too, of its human visitors. She could hear great doors
somewhere crash together, and the reverberation roll beneath the stone
vaulting. It would empty soon, desolate and dark; and so it would be
all night.... Why did not the very stones cry out?

Mistress Alice touched her on the arm.

"We must be going," she said. "They are closing the church."

IV

She had a long talk with Robin on Christmas night.

The day had passed, making strange impressions on her, which she could
not understand. Partly it was the contrast between the homely
associations of the Feast, begun, as it was for her, with the mass
before dawn--the room at the top of the widow's house was crowded all
the while she was there--between these associations and the
unfamiliarity of the place. She had felt curiously apart from all that
she saw that day in the streets--the patrolling groups, the singers, the
monstrous-headed mummers (of whom companies went about all day), two or
three glimpses of important City festivities, the garlands that
decorated many of the houses. It seemed to her as a shadow-show without
sense or meaning, since the heart of Christmas was gone. Partly, too, no
doubt, it was the memory of a former Christmas, three years ago, when
she had begun to understand that Robin loved her. And he was with her
again; yet all that he had stood for, to her, was gone, and another
significance had taken its place. He was nearer to her heart,