INTRODUCTION xxiii 



point of the living sword. A pitiless logic over- 

 ran everything. Intolerance of all the bright 

 asides of life — the wine, the dance, the merry talk, 

 and genial tarryings by the path, beloved of all 

 drones, bee or human — darkened the day. And 

 the result is only more honey, a vaster storehouse 

 filled to the brim with never-to-be-tasted sweets, 

 at a cost unfathomable, when the old larder would 

 have sufficed for every real need, and life might 

 still have been merry and leisurely. 



It is only a fable, far-fetched, fantastic, as any 

 told to the Caliph in the " Arabian Nights." But 

 there, again, the woman had her way, like the bee- 

 woman before, and some day she and her kind 

 may get it on a more ambitious scale. And then 

 — what of the sword that was once a sewing- 

 needle } 



