The girl sighed:
“Doesn’t it say that to you?” she asked, looking up at the big awkward fellow, whose intent face, lit by the candle-light, showed large eyes fixed on some distant thought.
“Yes, Betty,” said he—“something like that. That is one of the world’s masterpieces.”
“Masterpiece.” The child repeated the word lovingly—“I like that word—masterpiece.”
She went to the next print. It was the wondrous little wood-engraving of the vision as seen by the youthful Holman Hunt of The Lady of Shalott when the mirror cracks from side to side and the web on the loom flies wide, for her eyes have seen unheeding Lancelot.
The child looked at it for a long while:
“I think I know what that means,” she said—“the lady has been weaving something, and it has all got tangled about her, and she can’t undo the knots.”
She sighed:
“It is so hard to undo the knots,” she said.