She put her hand over her heart, as one who covers a wound, and her hand touched a folded paper under her gray gown. She drew it out in triumph and her face grew bright.
"Not all men, mother, not all men!" she boasted. "See--I took this with me when I went in to the trial from which I escaped. (Though what I have suffered in this wood is worse than that from which I ran away.) Read this letter from my husband, and you will see that not all men would chain their mates--that to-day the jailer himself throws away the key!"
"Read me the letter," said the Bee-woman. And she read:
"_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."
"Will you take the crimson from the blood of your cheeks?" said the Bee-woman. "Will you take the fresh blue from your eyes, the ivory white from your teeth, the ruddy gold from your hair, and the thick softness of it for brushes? Will you?"
"I know what you mean," she said, "but oh, it is hard! I--I cannot."