“What is that dreadful cobweb?” asked Kitty in a whisper, drawing nearer to Love.
“Speak to the children; they will tell you,” replied her guide.
But Kitty only crept closer to her, and drew the fair robes around her, peeping fearfully out from her hiding-place.
“I will explain,” said Love. “These are the children who tell falsehoods. Every falsehood a child tells its spirit gets more and more entangled in a web. The spider shoots a thread around it. One falsehood leads to another, so the web grows and grows, and the little captive spirit finds it harder to escape from its wretchedness and misery.”
“Can they never break away?” asked Kitty, drawing a breath of relief as the fog-picture slowly faded and the mist closed over it like a curtain.
Love’s face was sad and its meaning difficult to guess. Before she could answer there came a sound of little feet through the fog, a faint tramp, tramp. Not a merry run or dance; but as if restless, invisible little feet were going round and round, backward and forward. Then Kitty saw the image of something forming itself on the fog. Round and round, zigzag, to the right, to the left, rose a structure with walls made of thorns.
“What is that?” she whispered.
“Do you know what a labyrinth is, or a maze?” asked Love.
“It is a place very difficult to get out of,” answered Kitty; and she grew quite giddy looking at this rolling, crooked, curving, spinning-about, straightening place.