struck the single pane and blinded her.

"Before you look," said the Bee-woman, "tell me if you remember that picture of yours which you think the best?"

"Do I remember it?" she repeated, "can I ever forget it? A year of my life has gone into it. The year that I was married."

The glass of that window has strange properties.

[Pg 29]

[Pg 29]

"Do you think it worth that year?" said the Bee-woman.

"It could not have been done with less," she said.

"Now look," said the Bee-woman, "and tell me what you see."

She went to the casement, and it seemed as if the aged trees formed a long, long aisle out from it, narrow and bright, and at the end was a sunny glade.

"I see a young man," she said, "laughing and singing to himself in the sun."

"Has he suffered?" asked the Bee-woman.

"No, he is hardly more than a boy. His hair curls like a boy's. His face has never known a care."

"What is he doing?" asked the Bee-woman.

"He is eating fruit and painting a picture on a white cottage wall. The children and the old men are watching him."

[Pg 30]"Do you watch him, too," said the Bee-woman, folding her hands in her lap.

[Pg 30]

Soon she gave a little cry.

"What! what!" she murmured, "how can he do that—he is but a boy!"

"Is he weeping?" asked the Bee-woman. "Has he shut out the world?"

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