ic that you didn't
need to consider it. That was her next discovery, as with Beppo
tugging at the end of his tether she walked onward.

She was used to walking; she walked strongly, and with a trudging
sturdiness, not without its grace. She came to the part of Fifth
Avenue where the great houses begin to thin out, and vacant lots, as
if ashamed of their vacancy, shrink behind boardings vivid with the
news of picture-plays. It was the year when they were advertising the
screen-masterpiece, _Passion Aflame_; and here was depicted Luciline
Lynch, a torch in her hand, her hair in maenadic dishevelment, leading
on a mob to set fire to a town. Letty herself having been in that mob
paused in search of her face among the horde of the great star's
followers. It was a blob of scarlet and green from which she dropped
her eyes, only to have them encounter a friend of long standing.

At the foot of the boarding, and all in a row, was a straggling band
of dust-flowers. It was late in the season, yet not too late for their
bit of blue heaven to press in among the ways of men. She was not
surprised to find them there. Ever since the crazy woman had pointed
out the mission of this humble little helper of the human race she had
noted its persistency in haunting the spots which beauty had deserted.
You found it in the fields, it was true; but you found it rarely,
sparsely, raggedly, blooming, you might say, with but little heart for
its bloom. Where other flowers had been frightened away; where the
poor crowded; where factories flared; where junk-heaps rusted; where
backyards baked; where smoke defiled; where wretchedness stalked;
where crime brooded; where the land was unkempt; where the human
spirit was sodden--there the celestial thing multiplied its celestial
growths, blessing the eyes and making the heart leap. It mattered
little that so few gave it a thought or regarded it as other than a
weed; there were always those few, who knew that it spelled beauty,
who knew that it spelled something more.

Letty was of those few. She was of those few for old sake's sake, but
also for the sake of a new yearning. Slipping off a glove she picked a
few of the dusty stalks, even though she knew that once taken from
their task of glorifying the dishonored the blue stars would shut
almost instantly. "They'll wither in a few days now," she said, in
self-excuse; "and anyhow I'll leave most of them." Having shaken off
the dust she fastened them in h