y they looked about them for the
attendant but he had mysteriously disappeared. Leila said she knew the
way out and she started with all the confidence that a usually level
headed girl can have, but alas! she nearly broke her head by running
into one of the big mirrors. Nannie happened to look in a certain
direction when she saw the door and the curtains about it as plainly as
she ever saw anything in her life.

"There I see the door," she cried, "come this way," and she started with
her hands out before her like some one feeling his way in the dark,
though it was as bright about them as the electric lights could make it.
All at once the door she had in view disappeared like magic and she
stood before herself in a mirror ducking her head backwards and forwards
like two young chickens with their beaks just touching in the
preliminaries of a fight. The situation was becoming too serious to be
amusing any longer.

"What shall we do?" said Fanny, who had read of death in the mysterious
labyrinths in ancient times. The roof was low, and even if the sky had
been their roof they had no wings, like Daedalus, whereby they might
escape.

The girls began to get nervous, and several million of them seemed to
huddle together as they discussed the situation.

"I say, let's yell!" said Mary.

"But what is the use to yell," one said, "if they have determined that
we are to die here?"

[Illustration: "THEY HELD TO ONE ANOTHER, AS IF FOR LIFE OR DEATH."]

Now they were becoming really frightened. The picture of their lingering
death in that frightful crowd of specters was most horrifying. Their
voices were becoming tremulous and hollow, and the terra-cotta figures
of wild Bedouins that sat in a niche of the far wall and was multiplied
a thousand times, seemed to grin at them maliciously, as if in
anticipation of seeing their agonizing struggles against death by
hunger. The suspense was becoming something terrible.

"I say somebody must yell."

"Let Kate yell, she's got a strong voice that might reach the street."

Kate tried to do her duty, and she said, "Oh, Say!" in a voice that
would not have wakened a rabbit from its slumber.

She tried again, "Oh, say, we want to get out!" in a voice so hollow
that none of the girls recognized it as hers.

"Is ze ladies seen eet all they want?" said the polite attendant, as he
seemed to come before them at one step.

"Where were you?" they all cried.

"Why, I vas by ze glass about