doing all the time the wise woman was talking to
her? Would you believe it?--instead of thinking how to kill the ugly
things in her heart, she was with all her might resolving to be more
careful of her face, that is, to keep down the things in her heart so
that they should not show in her face, she was resolving to be a
hypocrite as well as a self-worshipper. Her heart was wormy, and the
worms were eating very fast at it now.

Then the wise woman laid her gently down upon the heather-bed, and she
fell fast asleep, and had an awful dream about her Somebody.

When she woke in the morning, instead of getting up to do the work of
the house, she lay thinking--to evil purpose. In place of taking her
dream as a warning, and thinking over what the wise woman had said the
night before, she communed with herself in this fashion:--

"If I stay here longer, I shall be miserable, It is nothing better than
slavery. The old witch shows me horrible things in the day to set me
dreaming horrible things in the night. If I don't run away, that
frightful blue prison and the disgusting girl will come back, and I
shall go out of my mind. How I do wish I could find the way to the good
king's palace! I shall go and look at the picture again--if it be a
picture--as soon as I've got my clothes on. The work can wait. It's not
my work. It's the old witch's; and she ought to do it herself."

She jumped out of bed, and hurried on her clothes. There was no wise
woman to be seen; and she hastened into the hall. There was the
picture, with the marble palace, and the proclamation shining in
letters of gold upon its gates of brass. She stood before it, and gazed
and gazed; and all the time it kept growing upon her in some strange
way, until at last she was fully persuaded that it was no picture, but
a real city, square, and marble palace, seen through a framed opening
in the wall. She ran up to the frame, stepped over it, felt the wind
blow upon her cheek, heard the sound of a closing door behind her, and
was free. FREE was she, with that creature inside her?

The same moment a terrible storm of thunder and lightning, wind and
rain, came on. The uproar was appalling. Agnes threw herself upon the
ground, hid her face in her hands, and there lay until it was over. As
soon as she felt the sun shining on her, she rose. There was the city
far away on the horizon. Without once turning to take a farewell look
of the place she was leaving, she set off, as fas