The young officer smiled at her, then said, not sadly, but with a strange earnestness:
“I must die.”
The little bee could not reply. For the first time in her life she seemed to comprehend what it meant to have to die; and death seemed much closer when someone else was about to die than when her own life had been imperiled in the spider’s web.
“If there were only something I could do,” she said, and burst into tears.
The dying hornet made no answer. He opened his eyes once again and heaved a deep breath—for the last time. Half an hour later he was thrown down into the grass outside the hive along with his dead comrades.
Little Maya never forgot what she had learned from this brief farewell. She knew now for all time that her enemies were beings like herself, loving life as she did and having to die a hard death without succor. She thought of the flower sprite who had told her of his rebirth when Nature sent forth her blossoms again in the spring; and she longed to know whether the other creatures would, like the sprite, come back to the light of life after they had died the death of the earth.
“I will believe it is so,” she said softly.
A messenger now came and summoned her to the queen’s presence. She found the full court assembled in the royal reception room. Her legs shook, she scarcely dared to raise her eyes before her monarch and so many dignitaries. A number of the officers of the queen’s staff were missing, and the gathering was unusually solemn. Yet a gleam of exaltation seemed to light every brow—as if the consciousness of triumph and new glory won encircled everyone like an invisible halo.
The queen arose, made her way unattended through the assemblage, went up to little Maya and took her in her arms.
This Maya had never expected, not this. The measure of her joy was full to overflowing; she broke down and wept.