"You cannot love," repeated Saggia firmly. "Only Princesses can love. You should not think of it any more."
Nuova looked up into the sky. And when she spoke it was as if she were speaking in a dream. "I want to love and I cannot love! Only a Princess can love. And I am not a Princess. What can I do? Clean floors?" She turned to Saggia and smiled sadly. "No, I cannot clean floors, either," she said softly. "I am an unfortunate sort of bee, Saggia, a worthless sort. A new bee, but not new enough to love, and too new to clean floors. Just a bee to lie under the heliotrope bush."
Just then Beffa, who had come hopping and gently humming up to them unperceived by either, and who had overheard Nuova's last words, began to sing:
"A heliotrope or a rose-bush,
A pale-blue flower or pink,
But a dead bee sees no colors
Nor smells sweet smells, I think.
An old world for old bees,
A new world for the new,
And, ah, who knows the real truth?
The untrue may be true."
Nuova was delighted, in her sadness, to see Beffa again. "Beffa, you dear, funny Beffa!" she cried. "But how did you get out here in the garden?"
"He couldn't come,
And so he came.
Can or cannot,
All's a name,"
sang Beffa in reply, hopping about more vigorously than ever.
As Beffa finished, Saggia saw some of the other bees looking scowlingly toward them. She touched Nuova with an antenna.
"Nuova," she said in a low voice, "we must get to work. The other bees are noticing us. We are idling. We must go to work. Beffa can sit here in the sunshine and watch us." She moved off toward a flower.
Nuova looked after her a moment, and then she turned to Beffa.