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"Let me hear no more of thy weeping! Ye shall not be made to wed Corrus!" Nevertheless, at the speaking of her lover's name, the older woman's lips trembled despite themselves; and she said nothing further beyond a brief "Sleep well." After which the two women turned in, and shortly reached the drowsy point.
Nothing could have told the investigators so well just how childlike the Sanusians really were. Corrus had all he could do to hold in himself. "Mownoth!" he exclaimed, his eyes raised fervently. "If it be thy will to deliver us, give us the secret this night!" Meanwhile, in Rolla's hut, a similar scene was going on under the doctor's projected eye.
At a distance of perhaps half a mile they stopped and stared hard at the scene ahead of them. "Hear ye anything, Cunora?" asked the older woman. The girl's keen ears had caught a sound. "Methinks something hath aroused our people. I wonder " "Cunora!" gasped Rolla excitedly. "Think ye that Corrus and Dulnop have succeeded in growing the flower?" They ran nearer.
"Nay," answered Rolla, and proceeded to explain, in the wrong order, as a child might, by relating first the crossing of the ridge, the flight from the bees, the "masters'" cruel method of dealing with Corrus and Dulnop, and finally the matter of the fire itself, the real cause of the whole affair. Somat was intelligent enough to fill in such details as Rolla omitted.
Within a few minutes however, Corrus and Dulnop set out together in the opposite direction, as agreed upon; and shortly the guards were withdrawn. This meant that the holiday was officially sanctioned, so long as the two couples kept apart; but if they were to join forces afterward, and be caught in the act, they would be severely punished. Such was bee efficiency and sentiment.
The most curious part of the matter was that these people were mentally incapable of conceiving that there was intelligence at work upon them from another world, or even that there was another world. "Ye saw the stars last night?" Corrus spoke to Dulnop. "Well, 'tis just such stars as shall awaken the seed of the flower. Ye shall see!"
Kinney; Van Emmon occupied the guest-room in lonely grandeur. When he came down to breakfast he said he had dreamed that he was Corrus, and that he had burned himself on a blazing cow. Again in the trance state, the four found that Rolla and Cunora, after reaching an understanding with Corrus and Dulnop, had already left their huts in search of the required stone. Five bees accompanied them.
"We have learned a way to make ourselves free! As free as the squirrels!" "Aye," agreed the younger. "We know the method. But how shall we secure the means?" Corrus gave an impatient gesture. "'Twill come in time, Dulnop, just as the dream came! Meanwhile we must tell every one of our kind, so that all shall be ready when the day comes to strike!
Nevertheless, Billie could see no cause whatever for it; neither did she hear anything. The other flier remained out of sight. All that the architect could guess was that the operator had "got the drop" on Corrus in some manner which was clear only to those involved. Badly puzzled, Billie watched the four humans hurry away, their manner all but slinking.
The woman sat for a long time in the growing dusk, looming out pensively over the valley. Corrus was somewhere within a mile or two, and so Kinney was not surprised to see the herdsman's image dancing, tantalizingly, before Rolla's eyes. She was thinking of him with all her might. Presently she shivered with the growing coolness, and went into a rough hut, which she shared with Cunora.
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