not what I thought."

"Child," said the Bee-woman, "for I suppose you call it cruel because it does not please you, why life is as it is, I do not know; but that it is so no one can doubt who has tried to make it otherwise and failed. Now, what will you do?"

She bent her head before the eyes of the Bee-woman, ashamed, because in her deep brown eyes she saw reflected her lost years.

"What shall I do?" she asked meekly.

"Go back, child," said the Bee-woman, and her voice warmed like summer sunshine on the wall at noon, "go back and let men make pictures: do you make men!"

Then outside the door she saw the little path and suddenly she seemed to know where it would lead and how, and she had no fear at all of the wood.

"Good-bye, mother, God keep you!" she said and stepped over the threshold.

"So long as I keep my bees, child, God will doubtless keep me," said the Bee-woman, "and that is true in this wood and out of it. Now hurry back, for you have stayed almost too long."

She waved her hand and turned from the hut, threading her way among the trees.

"I must go back, I must go back!" she said to herself, and moved more and more quickly, for something drew her almost off the ground.

Once she thought she heard a low cry behind her, and as she looked back she saw some one running hotly through the wood across her track.

She called aloud to help the poor creature, for she saw that it was a woman in deadly terror, wrapped in a long gown, with two great braids of dark hair, that hit against her back like whips, who turned her pale, crazed face—and it was the woman in whose carriage she had driven to the edge of the wood.

"Come back!" she called, "this is the way! Come back!"

But the runner clasped her shaking hands upon her heart and leaned hotly forward in one last burst of speed, and fell fainting across the threshold of the Bee-woman's hut.

Then a panic terror caught the woman who had left that hut, a terror to which her first fright was as nothing.

"In God's name," she screamed, "where am I? What am I? Who is that wrinkled woman with young eyes? What wood is this?"

So screaming she whirled about and missed her footing, and fell heavily over the root of a great tree, striking her head in the fall.

A sickening pain washed in great waves through every nerve, and she struggled, turning her head feebly from side to side, closing her eyes against the blinding light that pierced her brain like knives.

The tall trees swam and wavered before her, the boughs tossed and swayed and receded till they were like a forest seen in a picture. Then she saw that they were framed in a window, with empty space behind them, and that she was staring at them from a bed in a strange room.

Over her eyes bent two brown eyes, young and kind.

"Do you see me? Can you speak to me?" she heard.

"I do not hear the bees," she muttered, "I miss them. And yet you are the Bee-woman, are you not? I know your eyes——"

"I am the nurse," said the voice, "there are no bees here. You hear the rumbling in the street below. I am glad to see you open your eyes—we were growing worried. You remember you are at the hospital, do you not? Would you like to see your husband? He is just outside the door."

She looked long at the nurse. "My husband," she murmured. "Oh, yes. Does he know that I got away? How did you bring me back here? Tell the doctor that—that I could not bear it and that he must take me through without it. He—he will be glad—"

"The operation is over," said the nurse, "and you have nothing to bear, now. You are just coming out of the ether. Do you understand? Everything is all right. You have only to lie quiet, now, and you may see your husband, if you wish. He wanted to see you as soon as you were safely out of the wood, he said."

The tears gathered in her eyes, but she was too weak to wipe them.

"'Out of the wood,'" she whispered, "'out of the wood'! So that is what they mean! But he will never go into that wood ... yes, call him in."

The Next Lesson

CONTENTSTHE FARM BY THE FOREST

It was years afterward, and in October, the very climax of a late and lingering autumn, that I sat by my friend one afternoon in the ripe orchard and knew suddenly that we were going to speak of one of those strange experiences of hers that, for me, set her more effectually apart from others than any of her many and varied gifts and graces. As before, we fell into the matter suddenly, with no warning, and at a light question from me the like of which I must have asked her many times with no such answer as I then got.

All about us lay the windfalls, piled evenly, rich heaps of sunset colour. The better fruit gleamed through the boughs like fairy lamps and great ladders leaned against these on which the men climbed, picking carefully. Below them the maidservants, laughing and excited at this pleasant change of labour, handed the baskets and filled the gaping barrels. And up the ladders and through the trees and among the tinted heaps raced and played the children of the house, sniffing the heady flavour of the rich fruit, teasing the maids, cajoling the men, staggering under the heavy baskets, pelting each other, even, with the crimson and yellow globes, bringing each specially large and perfect one to their mother for congratulation. She, stopping for the moment her strange, jewelled embroidery, that alone would have marked her for an artist of high powers, would lean over each boy and girl, murmuring her praise, soothing in the same breath the unlucky ones who had not found the most gorgeous fruit, warning the men not to trouble the yet unready apples, quieting the maids if they grew too boisterous, an eye and an ear for everyone and everything.

As the lowering sun struck full on the nearest heap of red and gold, and turned the russet fruit on the bough to bronze nuggets wrapped in leaves of wonderfully wrought jade, a sudden thought tempted me and I spoke quickly, glancing slyly at her calm, contented face.

"Look at that colour!" I said, "does it not cry out to you to be painted? Does it not make you remember that spring orchard of yours that everyone praised so, and from which the great Master predicted your future? Would you not like to escape from all this pleasant, tiny bustle, this network of ceaseless demands upon your hands, your heart, your brain, and once again attack a real work?"

She looked curiously at me.

"A real work?" she repeated.

"I mean an enduring work," I explained, "a thing from which you can lift your hand some day and say, 'This is done. To the best of my power it is finished. Let it stand, and judge me by it.'"

She nodded her head slowly and I saw that she was not really looking at me, though she seemed to be, but beyond me, across the splendid orchard piles, into the stacked gold of the corn far afield.

"That's it," she murmured, "that's just what I told her—'an enduring work.' And