Burn, Witch, Burn!

few prints. The great table, the "baronial board," was an entirely commonplace one, littered with dolls'

clothing in various stages of completion.

My disquietude grew. If Walters had been romancing about this room, then what else in her diary was

invention-or, at least, as I had surmised when I had read it, the product of a too active imagination?

Yet-she had not been romancing about the doll-maker's eyes, nor her voice; and she had not

exaggerated the doll-maker's appearance nor the peculiarities of the niece. The woman spoke, recalling

me to myself, breaking my thoughts.

"My room interests you?"

She spoke softly, and with, I thought, a certain secret amusement.

I said: "Any room where any true artist creates is of interest. And you are a true artist, Madame

Mandilip."

"Now, how do you know that?" she mused.

It had been a slip. I said, quickly:

"I am a lover of art. I have seen a few of your dolls. It does not take a gallery of his pictures to make one

realize that Raphael, for example, was a master. One picture is enough."

She smiled, in the friendliest fashion. She closed the door behind me, and pointed to a chair beside the

table.

"You will not mind waiting a few minutes before I show you my dolls? There is a dress I must finish. It is

promised, and soon the little one to whom I have promised it will come. It will not take me long."

"Why, no," I answered, and dropped into the chair.

She said, softly: "It is quiet here. And you seem weary. You have been working hard, eh? And you are

weary."

I sank back into the chair. Suddenly I realized how weary I really was. For a moment my guard relaxed

and I closed my eyes. I opened them to find that the doll-maker had taken her seat at the table.

And now I saw her hands. They were long and delicate and white and I knew that they were the most

beautiful I had ever beheld. Just as her eyes seemed to have life of their own, so did those hands seem

living things, having a being independent of the body to which they belonged. She rested them on the

table. She spoke again, caressingly.

"It is well to come now and then to a quiet place. To a place where peace is. One grows so weary-so

weary. So tired-so very tired."

She picked a little dress from the table and began to sew. Long white fingers plied the needle while the

other hand turned and moved the small garment. How wonderful was the motion of those long white

hands…like a rhythm…like a song…restful!

She said, in low sweet tones:

"Ah, yes-here nothing of the outer world comes. All is peace-and rest-rest-"

I drew my eyes reluctantly from the slow dance of those hands, the weaving of those long and delicate

fingers which moved so rhythmically. So restfully. The doll-maker's eyes were on me, soft and gentle…full

of that peace of which she had been telling.

It would do no harm to relax a little, gain strength for the struggle which must come. And I was tired. I

had not realized how tired! My gaze went back to her hands. Strange hands-no more belonging to that

huge body than did the eyes and voice.

Perhaps they did not! Perhaps that gross body was but a cloak, a covering, of the real body to which

eyes and hands and voice belonged. I thought over that, watching the slow rhythms of the hands. What

could the body be like to which they belonged? As beautiful as hands and eyes and voice?

She was humming some strange air. It was a slumberous, lulling melody. It crept along my tired nerves,

into my weary mind-distilling sleep…sleep. As the hands were weaving sleep. As the eyes were pouring

sleep upon me-

Sleep!

Something within me was raging, furiously. Bidding me rouse myself! Shake off this lethargy! By the

tearing effort that brought me gasping to the surface of consciousness, I knew that I must have passed far

along the path of that strange sleep. And for an instant, on the threshold of complete awakening, I saw

the room as Walters had seen it.

Vast, filled with mellow light, the ancient tapestries, the panelings, the carved screens behind which

hidden shapes lurked laughing-laughing at me. Upon the wall the mirror-and it was like a great

half-globe of purest water within which the images of the carvings round its frame swayed like the

reflections of verdure round a clear woodland pool!

The immense chamber seemed to waver-and it was gone.

I stood beside an overturned chair in that room to which the doll-maker had led me. And the doll-maker

was beside me, close. She was regarding me with a curious puzzlement and, I thought, a shadow of

chagrin. It flashed upon me that she was like one who had been unexpectedly interrupted-

Interrupted! When had she left her chair? How long had I slept? What had she done to me while I had

been sleeping? What had that terrific effort of will by which I had broken from her web prevented her

from completing?

I tried to speak-and could not. I stood tongue-tied, furious, humiliated. I realized that I had been

trapped like the veriest tyro-I who should have been all alert, suspicious of every move. Trapped by