To-night the east wing was closed. All this great glare of artificial light never traversed there. A heavy crimson curtain hid the polished door that led to it.
But Rosalie’s spirit wandered off in that direction. A great curiosity, with a deeper feeling underneath to give the strength it needed, led her out into the central hall—led her gliding towards that gloomy fatal door.
She drew the curtain back with one white hand, white as snow against this deeper shade, and turned the handle. The door opened. Blackness, dampness, and the smell of decay and mildew met her, like a blast of foul despair.
She threw up her head, passed through, and the door slipped to behind her. And for one moment it seemed as if the parting kiss of freedom glowed on her forehead once again. And yet again the darkness was dispersed, for both the frog and jewel, and her own shining dress, that shone apparently without the aid of outer light, gave all the light it needed.
And here, within this gloomy place, at last came life and beauty, and the soft, tender light that lived in its own strength and was unborrowed.
No. 13! How well Rosalie remembered it! Mariana’s workroom, a worse place than many a prisoner’s cell. Yet it had about it an air of indefinable grandeur, the place of no petty criminal, or one sunk in moral disease. The rusty latch uplifted and disclosed the low-built room beyond, and the dim burner, the oaken chests, the damp, peeled walls, the shadowy corners, the tragedy of silence.
But what of these? They served but as backgrounds to a picture, and fitting backgrounds. For there, beside the long, low table, hid by the sheet, as white to-day as ever it had been three years ago, sat Mariana. But nothing there equalled the marble whiteness of her face. Her graceful figure bent forward, her hands were clasped on the table, and on her lips was that curious smile of pain, quite frozen there, as, wide open, her eyes stared at this hidden treasure on the table.
Some spider, mistaking the silent figure for a thing inanimate, had weaved a web of finest threads from head to foot, covering her silken hair and rough-spun dress. But respecting the icy chill that hung about those cold-cut features and hands, it had left them free and bare.
All about the cell fluttered the silent moths, settling and rising from the table. Yet they were powerless to canker anything. The bitter iron of living sorrow had too hard a crust.
The light that Rosalie brought with her lit up the room. She stood upon the threshold, gazing spellbound with horror on the central form. Could this be Mariana—this frozen statue, this figure nipped to the spirit with unavailing pain? Oh, never, never! For there this beautiful machine, working so fine a marvel of creation, had come upon a horrid pause, a fearful counterfeit of death, a fearful mockery of life!