Nuova gazed fixedly after the following drones. Hero's delay with Nuova made him the last to spring into the air. But he flew so strongly that it seemed certain that he would quickly make up for this handicap in the great race. Indeed, some of the onlooking bees began to call out, "See how Hero is gaining! He will surely win! Hero will be King!" Nuova had strained her gaze after Hero until he with all the others had passed from sight far out and up in the bright sky. As she gazed she had lifted on tiptoe and had even spread out her wings as if she would fly after him, but now as he disappeared she collapsed and fell back heavily with closed eyes and a pitiful sob into Saggia's supporting embrace. Just then Beffa came hopping and humming over to them and sang, as if mockingly, but really with sympathetic and comforting meaning: "Ha, ha, the sad attendant! Her champion is too slow. He'll never win the Princess, Her kiss he'll never know." CHAPTER X _Nuova in the Beautiful Garden_ When Nuova had recovered enough to face squarely the situation in her life and in the life of the hive, she found herself very weak and very sad. Above all, she found the thought of going again into the dark hive to work extremely repugnant to her. And almost the first thing she said to Saggia, who had remained faithfully by her, supporting and caring for her, was that she would not go back into the hive to nurse or make wax or do anything else that meant staying inside. Saggia comforted her by saying that she would not have to work inside. The kindly old bee whispered to her that there was always so much confusion and such change in the hive arrangements whenever a new Princess was born, and either she or the old Queen went out with many of the workers, that she could easily change her kind of work now without any notice being taken of it. And to confirm this Saggia pointed to several of the nurses, among them Uno, Due, and Tre, making one after another the little trial flights that Saggia had told Nuova to make preparatory to going into the garden out of sight of the hive. These nurses were plainly intending to become foragers. Even as Saggia and Nuova watched them, one after another flew out higher and farther and disappeared into the garden.