“The Mirror of the World will tell me, priest, what disposition shall be made of our captives.” Just ere she leaned over to gaze into the bowl, a fresh thought deflected her. With an embracing wave of arm she invited them all up to the bowl. “We may all look,” she said. “I do not promise you we will see the same visions of our dreams. Nor shall I know what you will have seen. Each for himself will see and know.——You, too, priest.” They found the bowl, six feet in diameter that it was, half-full of some unknown metal liquid. “It might be quicksilver, but it isn’t,” Henry whispered to Francis. “I have never seen the like of any similar metal. It strikes me as hotly molten.” “It is very cold,” the Queen corrected him in English. “Yet is it fire.—You, Francis, feel the bowl outside.” He obeyed, laying his full palm unhesitatingly to the yellow outer surface. “Colder than the atmosphere of the room,” he adjudged. “But look!” the Queen cried, tossing more powder upon the contents. “It is fire that remains cold.” “It is the powder that smokes with the heat of its own containment,” Torres blurted out, at the same time feeling into the bottom of his coat pocket. He drew forth a pinch of crumbs of tobacco, match splinters, and cloth-fluff. “This will not burn,” he challenged, inviting invitation by extending the pinch of rubbish over the bowl as if to drop it in. The Queen nodded consent, and all saw the rubbish fall upon the liquid metal surface. The particles made no indentation on that surface. Only did they transform into smoke that sheened upward and was gone. No remnant of ash remained. “Still is it cold,” said Torres, imitating Francis and feeling the outside of the bowl. “Thrust your finger into the contents,” the Queen suggested to Torres. “No,” he said. “You are right,” she confirmed. “Had you done so, you would now be with one finger less than the number with which you were born.” She tossed in more powder. “Now shall each behold what he alone will behold.” And it was so.