e," 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,