"Yes, here you are, I have come to you. I have come to tell you that I"--he stumbled a little in his speech, and smiled slightly--"I--am a new bee, too!"
Nuova laughed happily. Then she grew serious and puzzled. "And Saggia and Beffa," she said. "Are we all new bees in this hive?"
Hero smiled. "Uno, Due, and Tre--" he said.
"Ugh! horrid bees," said Nuova with a grimace. "They would like to kill me."
"Beasts!" broke in Hero, "I'll kill them!" But then he remembered the fact that he had no lance nor by bee tradition could have any. "Absurd," he said in disgust. "What a world, where only the women may carry lances and fight and work, and the men are only loafers and lovers, and can only love by tradition, at that. Bah! I'd rather be even a human being. They are silly enough, those awkward giants, and can't fly and eat other animals as spiders and snakes do, but their men can work and fight; and they can love whom they like. At least they can if they don't try to be too much like us, as some of them seem to want to be. It's a terrible thing to be a man bee. We have no rights at all!"
Nuova looked up at him wonderingly. "Why, the other drones seem to like to loaf," she said. "Anyway, they don't object."
"Don't object!" exclaimed Hero contemptuously. "They don't think; they don't feel! Each just does what the others do and all just do what drones have always done."
"But how else are we to know what to do," persisted Nuova, who had learned her lesson well from Saggia, "except by seeing what others do, and being told what the bees before us did?"
Hero was amazed and disconcerted to hear Nuova talk in this way.
"Why, you talk like Saggia!" he said. "What do you mean? Haven't you always objected to doing what the others do? Haven't you always tried to do what you most wanted to? And haven't you wanted to talk with me? I thought you--liked me."
Nuova was disconcertingly calm. "Oh, yes, I have objected to some things, and I do like to talk with you. And I like you. But all that must not interfere with the work and life of the community. And I am afraid it is interfering. I ought to be getting more honey, and you ought to be flying after the Princess." She paused; then she added, determinedly and even severely: "You must go right away. You can catch up with them yet, and beat them, and--and--win her." Nuova had grown more excited and earnest as she continued urging him, but her voice broke a little as she uttered the last words.