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 stood between her and where she would go.