Prepared though I had been for the extraordinary by Walters' description of the doll-maker, her
appearance gave me a distinct shock. Her height, her massiveness, were amplified by the proximity of the
dolls and the slender figure of the girl. It was a giantess who regarded me from the doorway-a giantess
whose heavy face with its broad, high cheek bones, mustached upper lip and thick mouth produced a
suggestion of masculinity grotesquely in contrast with the immense bosom.
I looked into her eyes and forgot all grotesqueness of face and figure. The eyes were enormous, a
luminous black, clear, disconcertingly alive. As though they were twin spirits of life, and independent of
the body. And from them poured a flood of vitality that sent along my nerves a warm tingle in which there
was nothing sinister-or was not then.
With difficulty I forced my own eyes from hers. I looked for her hands. She was swathed all in black,