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106
The Keeper of the Bees

money. I had to stay where the Government would care for me. But I can see what it would mean to see the Bee Master with a tinge of firelight on his fine old face and John Donne in his lean fingers.”

Slowly Margaret Cameron nodded.

“Yes,” she said, half breathlessly, “yes, it was a wonderful picture he made. Never in all my life have I seen even a painting of a man so physically and spiritually beautiful as the Bee Master. I hope when he comes back that you will stay until you thoroughly learn the fineness of his spirit. It would be a help to you all the rest of your days only to learn how gentle and tender and fine a man like Michael Worthington can be. The papers to-day are so full of what men are that they should not be. I wish every young man in the whole world could live a year with a man like the Bee Master in order to learn his patience and his forbearance, his breadth of view, his loving outlook on life. and his fearlessness concerning the hereafter.”

“Then, why,” asked Jamie. “did he fight the operation so?”

A dingy flush of red crept up in Margaret Cameron’s cheek.

“Well, for one thing,” she said, “he came here with a broken heart. He never has talked to me in detail but I have started over here on two occasions when he was talking to the little Scout, and I think that child knows who it was or what it was that broke his heart. I think that kiddy knows what he fled from when he came here