Unfortunately most people are not alive to the tragedies around them. They are often unthinking mechanisms, mere tabulating machines, like _Alfred Calway_, the Professor, who believes that "we're to give the State all we can spare, to make the undeserving deserving." Or as _Sir Hoxton_, the Justice of the Peace, who insists that "we ought to support private organizations for helping the deserving, and damn the undeserving." Finally there is the _Canon_ who religiously seeks the middle road and "wants a little of both." When _Ann_ concludes that her father is the despair of all social reformers, she is but expressing a great truism; namely, that social reform is a cold and bloodless thing that can find no place in the glowing humanity of _Christopher Wellwyn_. * * * * * It is Christmas Eve, the birth of Him who came to proclaim "Peace on earth, good will to all." _Christopher Wellwyn_ is about to retire when he is disturbed by a knock on the door. The snow-covered, frost-pinched figure of _Guinevere Megan_ appears. She is a flower-seller to whom _Wellwyn_ had once given his card that she might find him in case of need. She comes to him when the rest of the world has passed her by, forlorn and almost as dead as her violets which no one cares to buy. At sight of her misery _Wellwyn_ forgets his daughter's practical admonition and his promise to her not to be "a fool." He treats the flower-seller tenderly, makes her warm and comfortable. He has barely time to show _Guinevere_ into his model's room, when another knock is heard. This time it is _Ferrand_, "an alien," a globe trotter without means,--a tramp whom _Wellwyn_ had once met in the Champs-Elysées. Without food for days and unable to endure the cold, _Ferrand_ too comes to the artist. _Ferrand._ If I had not found you, Monsieur--I would have been a little hole in the river to-night--I was so discouraged.... And to think that in a few minutes He will be born!... The world would reproach you for your goodness to me. Monsieur, if He himself were on earth now, there would be a little heap of gentlemen writing to the journals every day to call him sloppee sentimentalist! And what is veree funny, these gentlemen they would all be most strong Christians. But that will not trouble you. Monsieur; I saw well from the first that you are no Christian. You have so kind a face. _Ferrand_ has deeper insight into the character of _Christopher Wellwyn_ than his daughter. He knows that the artist would not judge nor could he refuse one whom misery stares in the face. Even the third visitor of _Wellwyn_, the old cabman _Timson_, with more whisky than bread in his stomach, receives the same generous reception as the other two.