In the Border Country | Page 7

Mother, who is that boy?"
"Is it as well done as your picture?" asked the Bee-woman.
"It is better done," she whispered through her tears, "and he has gone
and left it. He has given it to a village girl for a kiss! Oh, how could he
leave it?"
"Because he can do many more, my child," said the Bee-woman, "and
life has not yet touched him."
"Tell me his name," she said, and turned from the window, pale and
sad.

"His name neither the world or this wood has yet troubled to learn,"
said the Bee-woman, "but he will be called a great painter before long."
"How long?" she asked.
"I forget if you call them days or years," said the Bee-woman, "but they
will not be many."
"Who taught him?" she asked.
"Everyone," said the Bee-woman, "the village girl, for one. But many
will learn from him."
She knelt again upon the earthen floor and looked the woman in the
eyes....
"I do not know, my child," said the Bee-woman, "I can only tell you
that you must paint what you have learned, with tears; he can paint he
knows not what, and he smiles. I ask you, which of you will go
furthest?"
"Ask me no more, mother," she said faintly, "but tell me this: why is
life so cruel? For you know everything and this wood is not what I
thought."
"Child," said the Bee-woman, "for I suppose you call it cruel because it
does not please you, why life is as it is, I do not know; but that it is so
no one can doubt who has tried to make it otherwise and failed. Now,
what will you do?"
She bent her head before the eyes of the Bee-woman, ashamed, because
in her deep brown eyes she saw reflected her lost years.
"What shall I do?" she asked meekly.
"Go back, child," said the Bee-woman, and her voice warmed like
summer sunshine on the wall at noon, "go back and let men make
pictures: do you make men!"

Then outside the door she saw the little path and suddenly she seemed
to know where it would lead and how, and she had no fear at all of the
wood.
"Good-bye, mother, God keep you!" she said and stepped over the
threshold.
"So long as I keep my bees, child, God will doubtless keep me," said
the Bee-woman, "and that is true in this wood and out of it. Now hurry
back, for you have stayed almost too long."
She waved her hand and turned from the hut, threading her way among
the trees.
"I must go back, I must go back!" she said to herself, and moved more
and more quickly, for something drew her almost off the ground.
Once she thought she heard a low cry behind her, and as she looked
back she saw some one running hotly through the wood across her
track.
She called aloud to help the poor creature, for she saw that it was a
woman in deadly terror, wrapped in a long gown, with two great braids
of dark hair, that hit against her back like whips, who turned her pale,
crazed face--and it was the woman in whose carriage she had driven to
the edge of the wood.
"Come back!" she called, "this is the way! Come back!"
But the runner clasped her shaking hands upon her heart and leaned
hotly forward in one last burst of speed, and fell fainting across the
threshold of the Bee-woman's hut.
Then a panic terror caught the woman who had left that hut, a terror to
which her first fright was as nothing.
"In God's name," she screamed, "where am I? What am I? Who is that
wrinkled woman with young eyes? What wood is this?"

So screaming she whirled about and missed her footing, and fell
heavily over the root of a great tree, striking her head in the fall.
A sickening pain washed in great waves through every nerve, and she
struggled, turning her head feebly from side to side, closing her eyes
against the blinding light that pierced her brain like knives.
The tall trees swam and wavered before her, the boughs tossed and
swayed and receded till they were like a forest seen in a picture. Then
she saw that they were framed in a window, with empty space behind
them, and that she was staring at them from a bed in a strange room.
Over her eyes bent two brown eyes, young and kind.
"Do you see me? Can you speak to me?" she heard.
"I do not hear the bees," she muttered, "I miss them. And yet you are
the Bee-woman, are you not? I know your eyes----"
"I am the nurse," said the voice, "there