This made her angry and bitter again, and very sad, too, for she was beginning to realize that she liked this beautiful, strong bee much more than she liked Saggia or Beffa. He was different from all the other bees she knew, and her liking for him was different. She wanted to be with him all the time, and to have him talk to her or even just to look at her. This must be loving, she thought, or part of it, anyway. She began to dislike this Princess that was soon to come out of her cell. Probably she would be very beautiful. When she thought of that she disliked her more than ever. She could not bear to think of Hero's loving her or of her loving Hero. She looked keenly at Hero, and then spoke to him slowly and cautiously, growing suddenly wise because of her new feeling for him. "But how do you know you will love the new Princess?" she said. "Is she certain to be beautiful and sweet? And will she certainly love you?" Hero looked at her curiously. It was strange how this pretty little bee attracted him. And it was strange that she seemed to have very clearly certain thoughts that were already rather hazily in his own mind. "Oh, well," he said musingly, "I shall not see much of her. It is not, in a sense, love for her, but the response to the call of the race, the fulfilling of my duty to our community, that will drive me to my best effort to win her. But, of course, it is love for her, too; that is, so far as there is love at all among bees. We can love only Princesses, you know, we drones; that is honey-bee tradition." Hero had seen no betrayal of Nuova's real feeling in her questions. He only saw in them the expression of her odd, independent way of looking at things and thinking about them. Nuova realized this and so became bolder by his blindness. And she was made bitter, too, by hearing this hero of hers repeat that always irritating phrase of "honey-bee tradition." "Oh, yes," she exclaimed, "you can only do what your grandfathers and your great-grandfathers did! You must keep your eyes closed and your heart cold and loll and loaf through all your life until they tell you to go and love--love a Princess--love her, sight unseen--love her so hard that if you win her you kill yourself! You are not _you_; you are not a bee with a heart and brain and strong body of your own, to live and strive and suffer and succeed after your own way and your own desires, but you are a machine, an automaton, to do what custom has fashioned you to do! You are not a bee; you are a clock-work; big and strong and handsome--and hollow!" Hero, amazed at her vehemence and her breaking of all bee tradition, looked at her more and more interestedly. He found a responsive feeling in himself, not only to the ideas expressed by her words, but to her own attractiveness and boldness. "Well," he said amazedly, but also sympathetically--"well, you _are_ a silly little bee!"