ometimes stuck. She
pulled harder; she pulled with her whole might and main. She could
shake the door; she could make it rattle. The hanging chain dangled
against the woodwork with a terrifying clank. If anyone was lying
awake she would sound like a burglar--and yet she must get out.

Now that she was balked, to get out became an obsession. It became
more of an obsession the more she was balked. It made her first
impatient, and then frantic. She turned the key this way and that way.
She pulled and tugged. The perspiration came out on her forehead. She
panted for breath; she almost sobbed. She knew there was a "trick" to
it. She knew it was a simple trick because she had seen Steptoe
perform it on the previous day; but she couldn't find out what it was.
The effort made her only the more desperate.

She was not crying; she was only gasping--in raucous, exhausted,
nervous sobs. They came shorter and harder as she pitted her impotence
against this unyielding passivity. She knew it was impotence, and yet
she couldn't desist; and she couldn't desist because she grew more and
more frenzied. It was the kind of frenzy in which she would have
dashed herself wildly, vainly against the force that blocked her with
its pitiless resistance, only that the whole hall was suddenly flooded
with a blaze of light.

It was light that came so unexpectedly that her efforts were cut
short. Even her hard gasps were silenced, not in relief but in
amazement. She remained so motionless that she could practically see
herself, thrown against this brutal door, her arms spread out on it
imploringly.

Seconds that seemed like minutes went by before she found strength to
detach herself and turn.

Amazement became terror. On the halfway landing of the stairs stood a
figure robed in scarlet from head to foot, with flying indigo lapels.
He was girt with an indigo girdle, while the mass of his hair stood up
as in tongues of forked black flame. The countenance was terrible, in
mingled perplexity and wrath.

She saw it was the prince, but a prince transformed by condemnation.

"What on earth does this mean?"

He came down the rest of the stairs till he stood on the lowest step.
She advanced toward him pleadingly.

"I was--I was trying to get out."

"What for?"

"I--I--I must get away."

"Well, even so; is this the way to do it? I thought someone was
tearing the house down. It woke me up."

"I was goin' this way because--because I didn't want