Eva waited for a moment, with as much patience as she could, in hopes that the door might now be opened for her. Vain hopes, for the ringing laughter and the merry voices began again; and once more Eva would have been discouraged, if the thought had not come that perhaps her gentle knocking had not been heard, and once more she tapped, louder this time, at the door. A voice within immediately asked, “Who knocks?” “I--Eva,” was the child’s reply. “Eva may enter.” Poor child! She thought the permission was useless, for the door remained as tightly shut as ever. “Why do you not come in?” the same voice asked, after a pause, “You are permitted.” “I cannot come in, because the door is shut,” Eva said. “Take the key and unlock it.” But Eva, after looking around carefully, could see no key, and so she said, “I do not know where the key can be.” “Look under your right foot,” said the voice within; and Eva, stepping to one side, saw lying, just where her foot had been, a queer little key, which she picked up; and seeing a key-hole among the quaint letters of the inscription, she found the little key just fitted it; and on turning it, the door flew open, and, as it did, a band of beautiful children came forward to meet her, though not one of them crossed the threshold of the door, and they bade her welcome. But when Eva would have gone in, it seemed to her that invisible hands prevented her entrance; and then one of the children, seeing that she still held in her hand the white stone she had picked up near the spring, and with which she had made the mark over Aster’s hiding-place, told her to throw it away, for that nothing from Shadow-Land could be brought into their valley; and then to be careful and not touch the threshold of the door, but to step over it. And Eva did as they told her; but when she threw the white stone over the precipice, it changed into a large white moth as it left her hand; and Eva, watching it, saw one of the faces rise from out of the curling mists to meet it, and then the moth changed into a face like the one she had first seen, and then both disappeared among the mists and vapors. And the moment she passed through the door, it closed suddenly behind her, and could not be told from the solid rock; and Eva saw that she was in a place totally different from anything she had ever seen before in her wanderings.