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 ? 
