peace…and sleep…sleep…What had she done to me while I slept? Why could I not move? It was as
though all my energy had been dissipated in that one tremendous thrust out of her web of sleep! I stood
motionless, silent, spent. Not a muscle moved at command of my will. The enfeebled hands of my will
reached out to them-and fell.
The doll-maker laughed. She walked to the cabinets on the far wall. My eyes followed her, helplessly.
There was no slightest loosening of the paralysis that gripped me. She pressed a spring, and the door of a
cabinet slipped down.
Within the cabinet was a child-doll. A little girl, sweet-faced and smiling. I looked at it and felt a
numbness at my heart. In its small, clasped hands was one of the dagger-pins, and I knew that this was
the doll which had stirred in the arms of the Gilmore baby…had climbed from the baby's crib…had