Clotilde smiles placatingly in the direction of this man who is as yet an indistinct presence in the darkness; but she does not tell him the real reason why she fainted.
It is my fault, says Thomas Argument. The shop is very bright. Sometimes my customers are overcome. Men as well as women. You’d be surprised. The gaslight in particular is too much for some of them . . . it is so new.
And there are so many . . . reflections.
Yes, Argument says. There are very many reflections. I apologize. Let me get you a brandy.
Abruptly, before she can refuse, he unfolds himself from his chair and with a swift, spiderlike motion of his long legs, disappears through a door she hasn’t noticed, into the inner recesses of the house.
By the time he returns she has risen, straightened herself, put on her boots and buttoned them, and circled the room twice. It is filled with books. At its rear is a large desk of some heavy, dark wood—walnut, perhaps?—the surface of which is strewn with papers and what can only be called “apparatus”—small, smooth machines of ambiguous purpose. Clotilde has her fingertips upon one of these machines when Thomas Argument returns with her brandy.
Ah! I see you have found my collection. A few toys with which I amuse myself. Would you like to see?
Clotilde sips, grimaces slightly, nods. Argument parts the curtains, filling the room with bright light in which motes of dust dance and then settle, revealing that they stand, he and she, in a typical gentleman’s study decorated in burgundy and green—or in the study of a man who aspires to be a gentleman; and he reveals himself, also, as a gentleman or a man who aspires to be a gentleman, it is not quite clear which: an unusually tall, thin, aspiring gentleman, with small, hooded eyes and a high, hooked nose, dark hair, long arms, long, delicate, spidery fingers. The overall impression is one of disjointedness rather than of grace, yet as Clotilde watches, fascinated, those long, delicate fingers probe with surprising precision among the disorder of objects on the desk, finally selecting one by touch, it seems, rather than by sight. He holds it out to her; taking it, she finds that it is a small bronze disc, one side of which is elaborately carved with the figures of animals—a snarling tiger, a dog on its back in a posture of submission, a plunging stallion, a grinning rat, a hen on its nest, a pig with its snout thrust deeply into the earth, others—and with a finely detailed calligraphy that Clotilde cannot read. The other side of the disc is smooth, slightly convex, polished—a mirror!
She catches the reflection of her own blue eye, stiffens unhappily.
You’re making fun of me, she says, pouting.
I’m not, says Thomas Argument. Take it to the window. Hold the surface to the light.
Clotilde does as she is told, holds the mirror’s reflecting surface up to the light; instantly the images on its back are cast in bright relief onto the wall behind her, the snarling tiger, the docile dog, the foraging pig, the stallion, the rat . . .
But how—
No one knows how, says Thomas Argument quickly. It is a tou guang jian—a magical Chinese mirror. I obtained it from a fellow dealer in glass who obtained it, himself, in the Orient.
Clotilde, whose Papa has traveled everywhere, is neither impressed nor intimidated by mention of the Orient. Thoughtfully she hands Thomas Argument his mirror.
What else have you?
You might like these, he says, smiling, and sets gilded spectacles on the bridge of her nose.
Oh! cries Clotilde, they make me dizzy! I see six of your room . . . or eight . . . I am not sure how many . . .
At this Thomas Argument laughs aloud. Yes, he says. I am never sure myself how many of anything I see through these glasses . . . they are multiplying spectacles . . . the lenses are made from faceted rock crystal.