ange brotherliness, took his stand behind.
He was not lacking in a certain delicacy--a sense of form--that did not
permit him to intrude upon this tragedy, and he waited, quiet as the
lion above, his fur collar hitched above his ears concealing the fleshy
redness of his cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic,
compassionate stare. And men kept passing back from business on the way
to their clubs--men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of fog came
into view like spectres, and like spectres vanished. Then even in his
compassion George's Quilpish humour broke forth in a sudden longing to
pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and say:

"Hi, you Johnnies! You don't often see a show like this! Here's a poor
devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty little story of
her husband; walk up, walk up! He's taken the knock, you see."

In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned as he
thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled by the state
of his own affections to catch an inkling of what was going on within
Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth getting wider and wider, and
the fog going down and down. For in George was all that contempt of the
middle-class-