on the contrary, seldom changed her mood, but kept that of calm assured self-satisfaction.  Father nor mother had ever by wise punishment helped her to gain a victory over herself, and do what she did not like or choose; and their folly in reasoning with one unreasonable had fixed her in her conceit.  She would actually nod her head to herself in complacent pride that she had stood out against them.  This, however, was not so difficult as to justify even the pride of having conquered, seeing she loved them so little, and paid so little attention to the arguments and persuasions they used.  Neither, when she found herself wrapped in the dark folds of the wise woman’s cloak, did she behave in the least like the princess, for she was not afraid.  “She’ll soon set me down,” she said, too self-important to suppose that any one would dare do her an injury.

Whether it be a good thing or a bad not to be afraid depends on what the fearlessness is founded upon.  Some have no fear, because they have no knowledge of the danger:  there is nothing fine in that.  Some are too stupid to be afraid:  there is nothing fine in that.  Some who are not easily frightened would yet turn their backs and run, the moment they were frightened:  such never had more courage than fear.  But the man who will do his work in spite of his fear is a man of true courage.  The fearlessness of Agnes was only ignorance:  she did not know what it was to be hurt; she had never read a single story of giant, or ogress or wolf; and her mother had never carried out one of her threats of punishment.  If the wise woman had but pinched her, she would have shown herself an abject little coward, trembling with fear at every change of motion so long as she carried her.

Nothing such, however, was in the wise woman’s plan for the curing of her.  On and on she carried her without a word.  She knew that if she set her down she would never run after her like the princess, at least not before the evil thing was already upon her.  On and on she went, never halting, never letting the light look in, or Agnes look out.  She walked very fast, and got home to her cottage very soon after the princess had gone from it.

But she did not set Agnes down either in the cottage or in the great hall.  She had other places, none of them alike.  The place she had chosen for Agnes was a strange one—­such a one as is to be found nowhere else in the wide world.

It was a great hollow sphere, made of a substance similar to that of the mirror which Rosamond had broken, but differently compounded.  That substance no one could see by itself.  It had neither door, nor window, nor any opening to break its perfect roundness.

The wise woman carried Agnes into a dark room, there undressed her, took from her hand her knitting-needles, and put her, naked as she was born, into the hollow sphere.