Since she’s not used to napping during the day, she tosses and turns in her bed, formulating a plan: in the middle of the night, when the rest of the palace is sleeping, she’ll go over to the other side and explore. No one will follow her around; no one will distract her. She gets out of bed and takes the key ring from her dressing table, setting it down next to her, determined to rest just for a moment, to clear her mind for her upcoming expedition. But she falls into a deep sleep. When she begins to dream, the key covered in leather, the one for the forbidden purple door, gets up, dragging the chain behind it, and fits itself between her legs. There it nestles against her and finds its path, traveling far past her thighs.

The Forest Girl feels this in her dream, and without meaning to, she begins to sway her hips as if she’s walking. The key becomes one with her womanly body. The girl experiences an unfamiliar pleasure, one she’s never felt before. She would have been unable to understand what was happening even if she had been awake. In her dream, she no longer walks, she’s running, pumping her hips, the key does the rest of the work, giving her pleasure that’s almost painful. But she doesn’t wake up. She opens her legs. Without wanting to, without knowing what’s happening, she gives herself to the key, drunk with pleasure.

She doesn’t awaken until the following morning. She’s astonished to find the key chain wrapped around her naked legs. Disgusted, she removes it from her body and jumps out of bed. She puts the keys in a drawer. She promises herself to never enter the rooms of the Illuminata, the Lady of Light, ever again.

Promises, promises, promises. The morning has yet to end when she takes the key chain from its hiding place and turns the first key in its lock. No sooner does she cross the threshold than she is offered cheese and bread, which, without her realizing it, return her to childhood. She explores the rooms and their treasures with even greater curiosity. A woman carries a tray—identical to the ones the footmen are passing—bearing the head of a handsome man. She realizes it’s a reference to the Bible and thinks that must be the case with the naked youth in the painting, an Adam attempting to seduce God. In this context the man’s head doesn’t disgust her; it stirs her curiosity.

She recognizes more biblical allusions in some of the paintings, and in the tableaux presented by the servants—on the patio she sees Joseph at the well, surrounded by his brothers—but she can’t identify other paintings, of epic battles she doesn’t recognize and women on horseback.