Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (218 page)

January
9.

I
had
not
meant
to
go
to
the
doctor
again.
And
yet
I
have
had
to. "Straining
my
nerves,
risking
a
complete
breakdown,
even
endangering my
sanity."
That's
a
nice
sentence
to
have
fired
off
at
one.
Well,
I'll stand
the
strain
and
I'll
take
the
risk,
and
so
long
as
I
can
sit
in
my chair
and
move
a
pen
I'll
follow
the
old
sinner's
slot.

By
the
way,
I
may
as
well
set
down
here
the
queer
experience which
drove
me
this
second
time
to
the
doctor.
I'll
keep
an
exact record
of
my
symptoms
and
sensations,
because
they
are
interesting
in themselves—"a
curious
psycho-physiological
study,"
says
the
doctor— and
also
because
I
am
perfectly
certain
that
when
I
am
through
with them
they
will
all
seem
blurred
and
unreal,
like
some
queer
dream betwixt
sleeping
and
waking.
So
now,
while
they
are
fresh,
I
will just
make
a
note
of
them,
if
only
as
a
change
of
thought
after
the endless
figures.

There's
an
old
silver-framed
mirror
in
my
room.
It
was
given
me by
a
friend
who
had
a
taste
for
antiquities,
and
he,
as
I
happen
to know,
picked
it
up
at
a
sale
and
had
no
notion
where
it
came
from. It's
a
large
thing—three
feet
across
and
two
feet
high—and
it
leans at
the
back
of
a
side-table
on
my
left
as
I
write.
The
frame
is
flat, about
three
inches
across,
and
very
old;
far
too
old
for
hall-marks or
other
methods
of
determining
its
age.
The
glass
part
projects, with
a
bevelled
edge,
and
has
the
magnificent
reflecting
power
which is
only,
as
it
seems
to
me,
to
be
found
in
very
old
mirrors.
There's
a feeling
of
perspective
when
you
look
into
it
such
as
no
modern
glass can
ever
give.

The
mirror
is
so
situated
that
as
I
sit
at
the
table
I
can
usually
see nothing
in
it
but
the
reflection
of
the
red
window
curtains.
But
a queer
thing
happened
last
night.
I
had
been
working
for
some
hours, very
much
against
the
grain,
with
continual
bouts
of
that
mistiness of
which
I
had
complained.
Again
and
again
I
had
to
stop
and
clear
my eyes.
Well,
on
one
of
these
occasions
I
chanced
to
look
at
the
mirror. It
had
the
oddest
appearance.
The
red
curtains
which
should
have been
reflected
in
it
were
no
longer
there,
but
the
glass
seemed
to
be clouded
and
steamy,
not
on
the
surface,
which
glittered
like
steel, but
deep
down
in
the
very
grain
of
it.
This
opacity,
when
I
stared
hard at
it,
appeared
to
slowly
rotate
this
way
and
that,
until
it
was
a thick
white
cloud
swirling
in
heavy
wreaths.
So
real
and
solid
was
it, and
so
reasonable
was
I,
that
I
remember
turning,
with
the
idea that
the
curtains
were
on
fire.
But
everything
was
deadly
still
in
the room—no
sound
save
the
ticking
of
the
clock,
no
movement
save
the slow
gyration
of
that
strange
woolly
cloud
deep
in
the
heart
of
the old
mirror.