But at that moment, she heard the voice of the wise woman calling, “Agnes!” and, smoothing her face, she tried to look as good as she could, and walked back into the cottage.  There stood the wise woman, looking all round the place, and examining her work.  She fixed her eyes upon Agnes in a way that confused her, and made her cast hers down, for she felt as if she were reading her thoughts.  The wise woman, however, asked no questions, but began to talk about her work, approving of some of it, which filled her with arrogance, and showing how some of it might have been done better, which filled her with resentment.  But the wise woman seemed to take no care of what she might be thinking, and went straight on with her lesson.  By the time it was over, the power of reading thoughts would not have been necessary to a knowledge of what was in the mind of Agnes, for it had all come to the surface—­that is up into her face, which is the surface of the mind.  Ere it had time to sink down again, the wise woman caught up the little mirror, and held it before her:  Agnes saw her Somebody—­the very embodiment of miserable conceit and ugly ill-temper.  She gave such a scream of horror that the wise woman pitied her, and laying aside the mirror, took her upon her knees, and talked to her most kindly and solemnly; in particular about the necessity of destroying the ugly things that come out of the heart—­so ugly that they make the very face over them ugly also.

And what was Agnes doing all the time the wise woman was talking to her?  Would you believe it?—­instead of thinking how to kill the ugly things in her heart, she was with all her might resolving to be more careful of her face, that is, to keep down the things in her heart so that they should not show in her face, she was resolving to be a hypocrite as well as a self-worshipper.  Her heart was wormy, and the worms were eating very fast at it now.

Then the wise woman laid her gently down upon the heather-bed, and she fell fast asleep, and had an awful dream about her Somebody.

When she woke in the morning, instead of getting up to do the work of the house, she lay thinking—­to evil purpose.  In place of taking her dream as a warning, and thinking over what the wise woman had said the night before, she communed with herself in this fashion:—­

“If I stay here longer, I shall be miserable, It is nothing better than slavery.  The old witch shows me horrible things in the day to set me dreaming horrible things in the night.  If I don’t run away, that frightful blue prison and the disgusting girl will come back, and I shall go out of my mind.  How I do wish I could find the way to the good king’s palace!  I shall go and look at the picture again—­if it be a picture—­as soon as I’ve got my clothes on.  The work can wait.  It’s not my work.  It’s the old witch’s; and she ought to do it herself.”