"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 help me. If only I had the colours!"
"There are always colours," said the Bee-woman, "if not of one kind, then of another. But you cannot get them for nothing."
"I will pay any price," she said.