stones that were
little more than rocks, which said something to the heart when pearls
and diamonds spoke only to the eyes. In the fields, orchards, and
gardens, white flowers, yellow flowers, red flowers were common; but
blue flowers were rare and retiring, as if they guarded a secret which
men should come and search out.

To this there was only one exception. Letty would notice as she
trudged back to her father's farm that along the August roadsides
there was a blue flower--of a blue you would never see anywhere else,
not even in the sky--which grew in the dust, and lived on dust, and
out of the dust drew elements of beauty such as roses and lilies
couldn't boast of. "That means," the crazy woman said, "that there's
nothing so dry, or parched, or sterile, that God can't take it and
fashion from it the most priceless treasures of loveliness, if we only
had the eyes to see them."

Letty never forgot this, and during all the intervening years the dust
flower, with its heavenly color, had been the wild growing thing she
loved best. It spoke to her. It not only responded to the ache she
felt within herself, but gave a promise of assuagement. She had never
expected the fulfilment of that promise, but was it possible that now
it was going to be kept?

With her eyes on the fire she saw the color of the dust flower close
to the flaming wood. It was the closest of all the colors, the one the
burning heart kept nearest to itself. It seemed to be, as the crazy
woman said, dear to Nature itself, its own beloved secret, the secret
which, even when written in the dust of the wayside, or in the fire on
the hearth, hardly anyone read or found out.

And as she was dreaming of this and of her Prince, Rashleigh was
walking up the avenue, saying to himself that he must make an end of
it. He was walking home because, having dined at the Club, he found
himself too restless to stay there. Walking relieved his nerves, and
enabled him to think. He must have the thing over and done with. She
would go decently, of course, since, as he had promised her, she would
have plenty of money to go with--plenty of money for the rest of her
life--and that was the sole consideration. She would doubtless be as
glad to escape as he to have her disappear. After that, so his lawyer
had assured him in the afternoon, the legal steps would be relatively
easy.

Letting himself in with his latchkey he was surprised to see a light
in the drawing-room. It had n