“What is your name?” she asked at last looking up into her face.
“My name is Love,” the pale lady replied.
“Love!” repeated Kitty in the greatest astonishment. “Love in Punishment Land, where there are whippings and puttings to bed!”
The pale lady smiled; her eyes were like the stars that keep their patient watch at night over the earth.
“They are not children whipped and put to bed early, and kept at lessons, that I shall show you. You have a little soul.” She laid her gentle hand on Kitty’s shoulder. “Every child has a little soul, and here you will see what happens to that soul when it grows sinful. Look yonder.” She pointed to the wall of fog. “There the souls will look like bodies, and you will see.”
CHAPTER VIII
PICTURES IN THE FOG.
Love stretched her fair hand, and Kitty could not tell if the fog grew transparent, allowing her to see what it had hitherto hidden, or if a picture painted itself thereupon.
Her eyes, fixed upon the dim mist, seemed to open wider and wider.
She saw a dreadful thing. An immense cobweb, and in it a child was caught. A big black spider was weaving its threads around the captive. Hand and foot the little one was bound. Kitty saw the child’s figure distinctly; its pretty hair shone through the web. How cunningly the spider had entangled it; weaving and knotting its gluey thread about the round throat, the bright eyes, across the rosy lips, the tiny ears, hands, and feet. The child did not stir; it remained quiet in its gray, filmy prison. But there were other children in the fog, some entangled in webs almost as large and strong, while others had but a silver thread or two gleaming about their necks and brows. These played merrily about, not seeing the black wary spider watching above their head, and every now and then shooting out, spinning and knotting a thread about them.