THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 177 



northward trend of her race, and then the folly of 

 her own wisdom — intellect turning upon itself — 

 all combined to lose for her the old slothful 

 paradise of plenty. The drone, reasoning in- 

 versely by the wisdom of his folly, made a better 

 compromise with fate. He held to his life of ease 

 and his gratuitous pleasures at all cost, and let his 

 mate go her way undeterred, blinding his eyes to 

 the new necessities. Work and responsibility 

 gradually soured and sharpened and hardened the 

 one, while dependence on his womenkind as in- 

 sidiously changed the other into a creature of 

 idleness and the senses. And when he came at 

 last to realise the outcome of it all, it was too late. 

 The matriarchal commonwealth was established, 

 hedged round securely with a myriad poisoned 

 blades. To live a drone had been his heart's 

 desire, and now dronehood, mere seminality, was 

 allotted to him as a retribution. The things for 

 which man lifts his unregarded prayer all his life 

 through, might very well prove his fittest punish- 

 ment, granted to him in the Hereafter: so little 

 can man or drone distinguish between the enduring 

 things of life and death. 



But of all intolerable fates, that must be least 

 bearable, to have wisely willed and beautifully 

 fashioned our own eternity ; and then, being only 

 human, or at least reasonable, to find its goodness 

 really smooth-going, colour-fast, impregnable at 

 all points, with never a bright break or flaw to 



