The Lady in the Looking-Glass

People should not leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms.

And there was nothing

outside, the looking-glass reflected the hall table, the sunflowers, the garden path

She had no thoughts. She had no friends. She cared for nobody. As for her letters, they were all bills. Look, as she stood there, old and angular, veined and lined, with her high nose and her wrinkled neck, she did not even trouble to open them

sabella was perfectly empty.

Here was the woman herself. She stood naked in that pitiless light.

At once the lookingglass began to pour over her a light that seemed to fix her; that seemed like some acid to bite off the unessential and superficial and to leave only the truth.

She came so gradually that she did not seem to derange the pattern in the glass, but only to bring in some new element which gently moved and altered the other objects as if asking them, courteously, to make room for her.

Her mind was like her room, in which lights advanced and retreated, came pirouetting and stepping delicately, spread their tails, pecked their way; and then her whole being was suffused, like the room again, with a cloud of some profound knowledge, some unspoken regret, and then she was full of locked drawers, stuffed with letters, like her cabinets.

for she was one of those reticent people whose minds hold their thoughts enmeshed in clouds of silence