Near Madison Square, she paused before the window of a florist’s, and raising her veil, gazed longingly at the glowing mass of blossoms, which Nineteenth Century skill and wealth in defiance of isothermal lines, and climatic limitations force into perfection, in, and out of season.  The violet eyes and crocus fingers of Spring smiled and quivered, at sight of the crimson rose heart, and flaming paeony cheeks of royal Summer; and creamy and purple chrysanthemums that quill their laces over the russet robes of Autumn, here stared in indignant amazement, at the premature presumption of snowy regal camellias, audaciously advancing to crown the icy brows of Winter.  All latitudes, all seasons have become bound vassals to the great God Gold; and his necromancy furnishes with equal facility the dewy wreaths of orange flowers that perfume the filmy veils of December brides—­and the blue bells of spicy hyacinths which ring “Rest” over the lily pillows, set as tribute on the graves of babies, who wilt under August suns.

From early childhood, an ardent love of beauty had characterized this girl, whose covetous gaze wandered from a gorgeous scarlet and gold orchid nodding in dreams of its habitat, in some vanilla scented Brazilian jungle, to a bed of vivid green moss, where skilful hands had grouped great drooping sprays of waxen begonias, coral, faint pink, and ivory, all powdered with gold dust like that which gilds the heart of water-lilies.

Such treasures were reserved for the family of Dives; and counting her pennies, Beryl entered the store, where instantaneously the blended breath of heliotrope, tube-rose and mignonette wafted her across the ocean, to a white-walled fishing village on the Cornice, whose gray rocks were kissed by the blue lips of the Mediterranean.

“What is the price of that cluster of Niphetos buds?”

“One dollar.”

“And that Auratum—­with a few rose geranium leaves added?”

“Seventy-five cents.  You see it is wonderfully large, and the gold bands are so very deep.”

She put one hand in her pocket and fingered a silver coin, but poverty is a grim, tyrannous stepmother to tender aestheticism, and prudential considerations prevailed.

“Give me twenty-five cents worth of those pale blue double violets, with a sprig of lemon verbena, and a fringe of geranium leaves.”

She laid the money on the counter, and while the florist selected and bound the blossoms into a bunch, she arrested his finishing touch.

“Wait a moment.  How much more for one Grand Duke jasmine in the centre?”

“Ten cents, Miss.”

She added the dime to the pennies she could ill afford to spare from her small hoard, and said:  “Will you be so kind as to sprinkle it?  I wish it kept fresh, for a sick lady.”

Dusky shadows were gathering in the gloomy hall of the old tenement house, when Beryl opened the door of the comfortless attic room, where for many months she had struggled bravely to shield her mother from the wolf, that more than once snarled across the threshold.