In the Border Country | Page 5

you mean. But like you, they were old."
"That is to say, that they had seen more of the life they speak of, I suppose," said the Bee-woman.
"But the world moves, mother," she said.
"That is to say, that it runs round and round, I suppose," said the Bee-woman, "but not that it gets any farther from the sun."
"But women have learned many new things since you were young, mother."
"That is to say, that they have all the more to teach their children, I suppose," said the Bee-woman, "and they had more than a little, before."
"Who spoke of children?" she cried harshly, "not I! I spoke of work--the world's work, that I am free to do!"
"So long as bees hive and seeds fly on the wind," said the Bee-woman, "the world has one work for you to do, and you are bound, not free, to do it!"
Then she sank on the floor beside the old woman and began to beg her, for it seemed to her, as often it seems in dreams, that before she could go any farther she must win over this one who stood between her and where she would go.
"You think me vain," she cried, "but, indeed, with me this is no girlish fancy, mother. Men greater and wiser than I have told me that mine will be work for which the world will be the better."
"I think that they have spoken truly, my child," said the Bee-woman, "and that is why I was waiting for you."
"Then let me go and work!" she cried, and rose from her knees.
"Go quickly, indeed," said the Bee-woman, "but work with flesh and blood, as does God the Creator, not with paint and canvas, as does man, the mimic!"
Then this old bee woman grew tall and terrible to her, and she saw that she had been led into the wood as into a trap and that she must fight hard for her freedom.
"I do not know what you are!" she cried wildly, "but you talk like an old song mumbled over the hearthstone, and it is to the hearthstone that you would chain me. Was I given eyes that can sweep the horizon only to turn them downward to that narrow hearth?"
"My child," said the old woman, and her voice was like a bell that tolls across the ancient fields, "so long as bees hive and fire burns on the hearths of men will the daughters of men walk in this wood and tell me that the hearth is narrow; and yet it is wider than the width of the womb whence all men come, and wider than the width of the grave whither all men go. And all men know this."
She put her hand over her heart, as one who covers a wound, and her hand touched a folded paper under her gray gown. She drew it out in triumph and her face grew bright.
"Not all men, mother, not all men!" she boasted. "See--I took this with me when I went in to the trial from which I escaped. (Though what I have suffered in this wood is worse than that from which I ran away.) Read this letter from my husband, and you will see that not all men would chain their mates--that to-day the jailer himself throws away the key!"
"Read me the letter," said the Bee-woman. And she read:
"I love you because you think my thoughts with me, because our work is the same and we understand each other. Let us work on together hand in hand."
"Now dip this letter in the spring," said the Bee-woman, "and read it to me again. For now the paper can show you only what the pen has written."
Wondering, she dipped it in the spring, and the writing, which had been black, turned blood red and was not the same when she read it:
"I love you because your eyes are blue and have drowned my heart, because after I have done my work, which I cannot explain to you, I lie in your arms and cease to think. Give me a son with your eyes, for I shall never understand you."
She crushed the paper in her hand and flung it out of the door of the hut.
"Then he lied to me!" she said bitterly, "fool that I am!"
"If you had been a fool he would not have needed to lie to you," said the Bee-woman. "But you are one of those for whom no price is too great."
"Oh, oh!" she wept, "I am deceived! God and the world have deceived me! But I will not be beaten. I will show him--and you--that I am not the weak thing you think me. This very moment, if only I had the colours, I could paint as never before. I feel it. The very pain will