o face the monsters of the night. I looked at her; she was still
fully dressed, as I had left her, apparently had been sitting up. Her
rouge made flat patches on her pale cheeks, but her eyes were level.

* * * * *

This time the dancers did not retreat or vanish; they lurked in the
comparative gloom of the entry, jigging and trembling as if mustering
their powers and resolutions for another rush at us.

"You see," I chattered out to her, "it wasn't a nightmare."

She spoke, not in reply, but as if to herself. "They have no faces," she
whispered. "No faces!" In the half-light that was diffused upon them
from our lamp they presented the featurelessness of so many huge
gingerbread boys, covered with pink icing. One of them, some kind of
leader, pressed forward within the circle of the light. It daunted him a
bit. He hesitated, but did not retreat.

From my center table Miss Dolby had picked up a bright paper-cutter. She
poised it with the assurance of one who knows how to handle cutting
instruments.

"When they come," she said steadily, "let's stand close together. We'll
be harder to drag down that way."

I wanted to shout my admiration of her fearless front toward the
dreadful beings, my thankfulness for her quick run to my rescue. All I
could mumble was, "You're mighty brave."

She turned for a moment to look at the picture above my dying fire. My
eyes followed hers. I think I expected to see a blank canvas--find that
the painted dancers had vanished from it and had grown into the living
ones. But they were still in the picture, and the cross and the victim
were there, too. Miss Dolby read aloud the inscription:

"_A living picture_ ... The artist knew what he was talking about, after
all."

"Couldn't a living picture be killed?" I wondered.

It sounded uncertain, and a childish quibble to boot, but Miss Dolby
exclaimed triumphantly, as at an inspiration.

"Killed? Yes!" she shouted. She sprang at the picture, darting out with
the paper-cutter. The point ripped into one of the central figures in
the dancing semicircle.

All the crowd in the entry seemed to give a concerted throb, as of
startled protest. I swung, heart racing, to front them again. What had
happened? Something had changed, I saw. The intrepid leader had
vanished. No, he had not drawn back into the group. He had vanished.

Miss Dolby, too, had seen. She struck again, gashed the painted
representation of anoth