The voice died slowly away; the singer was moving farther off,--
"Ah! woe for the bees,
The flowers are dead;
No summer is fair as the spring.
Ah me, but the honey is thick in the comb;
'Tis a long time now since spring.
Ah, woe for the bees
That honey is sweet,
Is sweeter than anything!"
"Sweeter than anything,--sweeter than anything!" the voice, grown faint
now, repeated this refrain over and over, as the syllables of sound died
away.
It was Victorine going very slowly down the staircase from her room into
Jeanne's. And it was Victorine who had accidentally brushed the
pear-tree boughs as she watered her plants on the roof of the outside
stairway. She did not see Willan lying on the ground underneath, and she
did not think that Willan might be hearing her song; and yet was her
head full of Willan Blaycke as she went down the staircase, and not a
little did she quake at the thought of seeing him below.
Jeanne had come breathless to her room, crying, "Victorine! Victorine!
That son of my husband's of whom we were talking, young Willan Blaycke,
is at the door,--he, and an old man with him; and they must perforce
stay here all night.
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