"...The door shut behind them and they were in a scented darkness. At least that was how it seemed to her at first as she stood on warm paving stones with her back to the door and to the little man in a leather apron, a gardener perhaps, who had opened it and was now talking to her father. She took no notice of them, for they did not seem to exist for her. She was alone in the world inside the picture. It had seemed dark but now the light was silver. The paving stones were those of a narrow paved passage with four delicate fluted pillars on each side. The roof was made of wooden beams holding the weight of a great wisteria vine that entirely covered them and hung down in curtains of scent and color on either side. Beyond the leaves and flowers Mary was dimly aware of birds singing in a garden.

At the end of the passage a little old woman in a black dress, with a snowy mobcap and apron, stood at an open door smiling and holding out her hand. Mary went to her and took her hand and passed with her into a dark stone-flagged hall where a silver tankard of lilies of the valley stood on an oak chest. The flowers and the polished silver gathered all the light to themselves and Mary gazed at them entranced, noticing that a bird with spread wings was carved upon the top of the chest, and that across the front of it interlaced strappings formed a cross in the center, and suddenly she was no longer an intruder in this world inside the picture. It was her own world."

FROM The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge