The immense chamber seemed to waver-and it was gone.
I stood beside an overturned chair in that room to which the doll-maker had led me. And the doll-maker
was beside me, close. She was regarding me with a curious puzzlement and, I thought, a shadow of
chagrin. It flashed upon me that she was like one who had been unexpectedly interrupted-
Interrupted! When had she left her chair? How long had I slept? What had she done to me while I had
been sleeping? What had that terrific effort of will by which I had broken from her web prevented her
from completing?
I tried to speak-and could not. I stood tongue-tied, furious, humiliated. I realized that I had been
trapped like the veriest tyro-I who should have been all alert, suspicious of every move. Trapped by
voice and eyes and weaving hands by the reiterated suggestion that I was weary so weary…that here was