me
and I suffer."

Hearing these words from the pretty damsel, King Loc replied:

"I love you, Honey-Bee of Clarides, Princess of the Dwarfs; and that
is why I have held you captive in our world, in order to teach you our
secrets, which are greater and more wonderful than all those you could
learn on earth amongst men, for men are less skilful and less learned
than the dwarfs."

"Yes," said Honey-Bee, "but they are more like me than the dwarfs,
and for that reason I love them better. Little King Loc, let me see my
mother again if you do not wish me to die."

Without replying King Loc went away. Honey-Bee, desolate and alone,
watched the ray of light which bathes the whole face of nature and
which enfolds all the living, even to the beggars by the wayside, in its
resplendent waves. Slowly this ray paled, and its golden radiance faded
to a pale blue light. Night had come upon earth. A star twinkled over
the cleft in the rock.

Then some one gently touched her on the shoulder, and she saw King Loc
wrapped in a black cloak. He had another cloak on his arm with which he
covered the young girl.

"Come," said he.

And he led her out of the under-world. When she saw again the trees
stirred by the wind, the clouds that floated across the moon, the
splendour of the night so fresh and blue, when she breathed again the
fragrance of the herbage, and when the air she had breathed in childhood
again entered her breast in floods, she gave a great sigh and thought to
die of joy.

King Loc had taken her in his arms; small though he was, he carried
her as lightly as a feather, and they glided over the ground like the
shadows of two birds.

"You shall see your mother again, Honey-Bee. But listen! You know
that every night I send her your image. Every night she sees your
dear phantom; she smiles upon it, she talks to it and she caresses it.
To-night she shall, instead, see you yourself. You will see her, but
you must not touch her, you must not speak to her, or the charm will be
broken and she will never again see you nor your image, which she does
not distinguish from you."

"Then I will be prudent, alas! little King Loc!... See! See!..."

Sure enough the watch-tower of Clarides rose black on the hill.
Honey-Bee had hardly time to throw a kiss to the beloved old stone walls
when the ramparts of the town of Clarides, overgrown with gillyflowers
already flew past; already she was ascending the terrace, where the
glow-worms g