leep--though you seem unable to go without either
for very long--but for what you _should_ sacrifice them?"

She clasped her hands and faced the Bee-woman proudly.

"Art is the one thing in this world that makes these two the same," said
she, "to the artist his art is both his pleasure and his duty."

"That is the reason that artists are not women, then," replied the
Bee-woman, "for their duties cannot be their pleasures very long or very
often."

At this she would have run away, but her knees were still weak, and the
thought of the trackless woods stopped her heart a moment with fear.

"A Bee-woman may know much of bees," she said coldly, "but the world
beyond this wood has a wider space to overlook, and while you have been
growing old in the wood, mother, the humming of your charges has
stopped your ears to the voices of the young who fill the world outside.
They would tell you, if you could understand, that Art is the one word
that is one for men and women."

"My child," said the Bee-woman, "so long as bees hive and trees root in
the earth there will be no such word. For the words of the world were
made to match the things of the world, and that is so in this wood and
out of it."

She looked at the Bee-woman and felt troubled and on the eve of
something great and sad.

"You are no common peasant woman, I am sure," she said gently, "and
indeed, I have heard wiser and more travelled persons than you say very
much the thing that I think 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 st