They passed on, and Thoth drew the curtain of another cell. Here again the occupant was a woman, but she was exquisitely clothed, and both face and form were extremely beautiful. She shuddered when the masks entered, and hastily began to arrange in a harmonious manner various shades of coloured stuffs. She looked anxiously, too, at the walls of the cell, which were covered with pictures. To Daphne the pictures were perfectly unintelligible, and yet they seemed excellent both in colour and drawing. They were such pictures as might be painted by a great artist whose reason had been destroyed by some calamity. “Her task,” said Thoth, “is to live entirely for colour and form—in all other respects she is less intelligent than a butterfly.” Daphne looked into her eyes, and saw at once that she was quite distraught. Again Thoth repeated the same gibberish, and at last seemed to make the woman understand in a blinking manner that her life would no longer be made a burden. To Daphne, however, it seemed that the message of release had come too late—like longed-for rain after the tree has perished with drought. Suddenly a thought flashed through her mind, and without asking Thoth’s permission, she threw off her disguise and addressed the artist. At once she uttered a low cry of pleasure, and ran to embrace Daphne. Then she turned to Thoth and spoke to him in broken words. At Daphne’s request Thoth acted as interpreter, and told her the woman wished Daphne to remain as her companion. Daphne wept with pity, and Thoth led her away, the artist in vain trying to repress a cry of despair. Thus they visited room after room, and through all the variety of occupations in which the miserable women were engaged, the same features were conspicuous. Their labour was, without exception, either most irksome, most useless, most trifling, or else degrading, and yet it evidently required the highest degree of cunning and perseverance. In appearance, many of the women had been made physically most repulsive,—some maimed, some blind, some almost shapeless with distortion; and those whose bodies had escaped, had been deformed to a much worse extent in mind. Without exception they shuddered on the entry of the masks, and showed their terror in the most undisguised manner. Apparently Thoth tried to take away their fears, and to inform them that for the future they would live happily; but they listened with dull incredulity, and seemed quite hopeless. In the whole of this vast building there was not a single creature who could have kindled a spark of love in the heart of the most impassioned of men. Daphne was sickened by the spectacle, and oppressed with a heavy weight of sadness. She tried to escape, but her companion told her it was necessary for her to see more, and that he would show her the least revolting of the women. Daphne shrank from imagining what worse horrors the building might contain.