y, 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.

Then, as I looked, the mist, or smoke, or cloud, or whatever one may
call it, seemed to coalesce and solidify a