Once he had bought a chest of drawers with a still mahogany face and rounded knobs of glass. They looked like eight little pools in a shining wood, and he bought it because it made him think of that. The drawers pulled in and out on a grain of silk—his missis had tried them without looking at the knobs—and things that were put away in them came out again sweet and clean. It was a queer collection that found home in them at last, but he seemed to remember everything and its place. There were the clothes that the two of them had worn when they were wed ... Grandfather’s silk handkerchief and grandmother’s silk shawl. Funeral cards and a jubilee mug, and corals from over the sea. An old bow with a cracked back, and an umbrella that was a present from some squire. Rings of hair, still glossy and bright, too lovely in colour and texture to have come from any but a baby’s head. Horn spectacles in a carved box, and old knitting-pins with carved hafts; and fiddle strings, coil upon coil, that he had never had the courage to burn.... There were things of his wife’s, too, that he had put away when she was dead, though he had never succeeded in putting away the shoes. They gave the lie to her death merely by being about, and saying contentedly that she would be coming in. Old shoes, he thought to himself, like hats and chairs, had the secret of keeping what lovers seemed to lose. He felt much the same about mirrors as he did about old chairs. Who knew how much they had kept of what they had seen, or how much of it they might suddenly reveal? Layer upon layer of pictures must be sunken in their depths, rosy and white faces, mad eyes and cloudy hair. The depth of a mirror was the height of the firmament itself; you had only to turn it up to the sky to notice that. There was room in it to make hiding-place for countless tragedies of lives. Each time a blind was drawn it took something from the day, and at night who knew what it saw beyond the immediate circle of the lamp? Nobody could look into it without adding something new. A figure, crossing the room, passed through its magic water and emerged, yet surely left a ghost of itself behind. Those that looked long enough saw strange old things, it was said, but who could tell that any saw the truth? Minds and mirrors together could make magic enough to frighten half a world. And there were times when most folk, if it came to that, found even their own faces rather strange. Behind the presentment that they called themselves, eyes that were dead looked at them through their own, and smiles that belonged to others came to their lips.