She sat down before the shelves and began pulling the books out, now and then opening one to look at a picture or to straighten a bookmarker.
The nursery walls were covered with a flowered paper, and when Ellen had almost emptied the shelves she noticed that the paper back of them was of a different color from that on the rest of the room. It had not faded. The blue color between the vines looked soft and cloudlike, too, and almost as though it would melt away at a touch.
Ellen put her hand back to feel it.
Instead of touching a hard, cold wall as she had expected, her hand went right through between the vines as though there were nothing there.
Ellen rose to her knees and put both hands across the shelf. She found she could draw the vines aside just as though they were real. She even thought she caught a glimpse of skies and trees between them.
In haste she sprang to her feet and pushed the bookcase to one side so that she could squeeze in behind it.
She caught hold of the wall-paper vines and drew them aside, and then she stepped right through the wall and into the world beyond.