stick in a river, like a leaf in the wind. I looked behind me.
The windows did not open into the outer air but into a tightly closed
conservatory. The sound that was struggling in my throat was a scream,
but suppose it would only call in some of her creatures before Mr.
Dingley should hear! I looked squarely into her face, and I am sure,
in that moment, that I understood what death might mean. "I am going,"
I said, very quietly, and walked across the room toward the curtains.

She did not try to stop me, and every unobstructed step I took forward
I thought, with increasing terror, "What is it that she means to do?"
When I reached the closed curtain the grasp of her hands, which I had
dreaded; was the least of my fears. The anteroom was empty, but as I
passed its threshold I heard her move across the inner room, and then a
bell rang, away down in the lower part of the house. There is no
describing the feeling that was in me when, with the sound of that
uncanny signal in my ears, I opened the door into the grizzly maze of
passageways.

I remembered that I had turned to the right in coming in, so now I
turned to the left, and hurried down that narrow, unlighted way that
led me directly to another door. But I remembered that and opened it
and stepped through into another hall. Here were three branching ways,
and it was only one of these, of course, which would bring me to the
_sala_ door. The others might plunge me into Heaven knew what places
of the house, or what hands! There was no time to hesitate, I must
choose and chance it! There was not one thing--window, furniture or
color--to distinguish them. Yet in my agony of mind I gave a glance
down one and two of them; and on the floor of the second, a few yards
from me some small, light-colored object was lying. I ran forward and
stooped. It was the blue bow that had fallen from my hair.

I picked it up with a rush of thankfulness. This was an incident in a
fairy tale! It seemed an omen of safety, and as I held it in my hand I
fairly ran along the passage and came at last triumphantly out into the
hall, which I remembered, broad and carpeted with red.

Down the stairs I hastened, my heart going quick with the alarms of my
escape, opened the door at the foot of it and came into the little
entry. As I entered it I fancied a sound. It was like a step, very
soft, so soft as to be hardly audible, not behind me, not on the other
side of the door in front of m