y empty. All the rest of
the cast had gone home to get some sleep to fit them for the ordeal of
the coming performance, and the teachers who had been looking at the
paintings had also left. The rest of the building was in darkness, as
twilight had already fallen. One set of lights was burning on the stage.
Sahwah had no special business on the stage, she was simply curious to
see what it looked like. Sahwah never stopped to analyze her motives for
doing things. She paused to admire the statue of Joan of Arc, standing
in all the majesty of its nine-foot height. This was the first chance
she had had to examine it leisurely. In the rehearsal the night before
she had merely seen it in a general way as she whisked off and on the
stage in her part.

The construction of the thing fascinated her, and she opened the door in
the skirt to satisfy her curiosity about the inner workings of the
miraculous halo. She saw how the thing was done and then became
interested in the inside of the statue itself. There was plenty of room
in it to conceal a person. Just for the fun of the thing Sahwah got
inside and drew the door shut after her, trying to imagine herself a
fugitive hiding in there. There were no openings in the skirt part, but
up above the waist line there were various holes to admit air. "It's no
fun hiding in a statue if you can't see what's going on outside,"
thought Sahwah, and so she stood up straight, as in this position her
eyes would come on a level with one of the holes. She could see out
without being seen herself, just as if she were looking through the face
piece of a suit of armor. The fun she got out of this sport, however,
soon changed to dismay when she tried to get down again. It had taken
some squeezing to get her head into the upper space, and now she found
that she was wedged securely in. She could not move her head one
particle. What was worse, a quantity of cotton wool, which had been put
inside the upper part of the body for some reason or other, was
dislodged by her squeezing in and pressed against her mouth, forming an
effective silencer. Thus, while she could see out over the stage, she
could not call out for help. Her hands were pinioned down at her sides,
and by standing up she had brought her knees into a narrow place so that
they were wedged together and she could not attract attention by
kicking. Here was a pretty state of affairs. The benign Maid of Orleans
had Sahwah in as merciless a grip as th