His voice was barely audible in the hum of conversation. Simonoff was one of those rare teachers on the lower East Side who neither taught night school nor practised law after his daily duties were over. His passion was to understand his fellow men--to help them, if possible--although, for a reformer, he was given entirely too much to dreaming. His cafe bills for a year, when added together, made a surprisingly large total. But then Simonoff never bothered with useless mathematics. A hand organ outside was droning the "Miserere." Children of the tenements, like moths drawn to globes of brilliant light on midsummer nights, hovered about the organ and danced. There was a capricious abandon about their movements which fascinated Simonoff. He had a way of running his slender fingers through his wavy, brown hair, when he was emotionally stirred. "The dancing maidens of Trebizond were not more graceful than these," he sighed as his eyes followed the sinuous movements of two ragged little tots. "They outgrow it after a while." "Never," I protested. "The Grand street halls----" "I mean the search for beauty," drawled Simonoff. "This is the dance of Greek maidens at the sacrificial rites to Demeter. The Grand street thing is a contortion before the obese complacency of the great god Jazz. And Jazz has no soul." Through the ever-gathering darkness the electric lights began to twinkle like blue-white diamonds against purple velvet. The lights in the cafe too were turned on by a pottering waiter whose flat-footed shuffle had become familiar to us through many years of observation. A bedraggled looking person entered the cafe, clutching awkwardly a dozen or more cut roses. He passed from table to table and offered them for sale. The price was ridiculously small. It seemed strange to me that Simonoff's face should turn so white. His manner suggested great agitation. When the peddler reached him, Simonoff purchased the entire stock and gave him in payment far in excess of the amount asked. The happy vender directed one searching glance at him, then went out whistling. "What will you do with all those roses?" I asked. "Give them away," he answered, "to the dirtiest, most woebegone, most forlorn little children I can find. I shall do this in memory of John Keats." I looked my astonishment. "'A thing of beauty is a joy forever,'" Simonoff intoned dreamily. "But there's a story connected with it." "I suspected it," I said quietly. "When a school teacher consents to part with a perfectly good dollar for a dozen wilted roses, there must be an esoteric reason." "Materialist," he laughed. The dancing and the scurry of pattering feet had both ceased. The sounds of the night were now more soothing, more harmoniously blended. The earliest arrivals of the theatre crowd were besieging the sidewalk ticket office of the burlesque house opposite. Simonoff launched into his narrative. * * *