Nuova touched a near-by flower. "I am gathering honey," she said.
Saggia hesitated a moment, then began again. "And—and—" she stammered; then exclaimed suddenly and triumphantly—"and clean floors!"
Nuova smiled at Saggia's anticlimax. "No, I haven't scrubbed the floor yet. I suppose I ought to enjoy that a little before I die. But you see I am not really old enough to have had time for everything."
"That's it," broke in Saggia warmly. "You are not old enough yet. It is nonsense to talk of dying so young. You must live a long time yet. Look at me! Think how old I am!"
Nuova smiled again, but grew earnest as she spoke. "It is not how long you live, Saggia; it is how much you live. I have not done everything, but I have done most things. You, you dear wise, old, sensible bee, you have done the things calmly one after another as it came time for you to do them. But I have tried everything that was interesting and for only as long as it was. You have lived a long and useful life with much in it. I have lived a short and useless one; but also with much in it. You have lived mostly for others, and have been mostly happy. I have lived mostly for myself, and been mostly unhappy. But that is the way I am, Saggia. That is my way of living and really I suppose, my way of being happy; happily unhappy. And, Saggia"—and Nuova bent close over to her, as if to tell her a secret—"you know, don't you, that if I have missed cleaning floors, I have done something else in place of it; something you haven't done. I have loved! And that is the happiest unhappiness I have had."
Saggia was truly shocked. "Nuova," she exclaimed, "haven't I told you before not to say such things! You have not loved," she added, firmly, "because you cannot love. Poor little Nuova, you have much to learn yet about bee life."
"There is much about it I don't want to learn," muttered Nuova.
"There is much you must learn," replied Saggia sternly, but kindly. "And some of it you must learn now. When I say you cannot love, I mean exactly that; not that you ought not or must not, because other bees do not, but simply that you cannot. Bee loving is not just liking and sighing and laughing and dancing and crying, and being always happy and unhappy at once, but it is becoming the mother of babies, many babies, and that only Princesses can become. And when they are the mothers of babies, they are Queens. In bee land to be a mother is to be a Queen, and to be a Queen is only to be a mother."
Nuova was silent. She felt compelled to believe Saggia, who surely knew about the life of bees if any one did, and who had always spoken truthfully to her. And yet she had a feeling within her that seemed some way to contradict Saggia's knowledge.
"Well, then, Saggia," she said slowly, "I haven't loved, but I have wished to love." And she added in a whisper, "I want to love!"