the door and had seen Stephen (although it was early evening) sitting all naked on his bed, very drunk and shouting wildly—and he had not recognised Peter. But the boy knew when he met him again, sober this time, by the sad look in his eyes, that Stephen must go his way alone now, lead him where it would. . . A boy of fifteen could not help.
And so those holidays were more and more lonely, as the days passed and Peter's heart was very heavy. He did not go often to The Bending Mule now because Stephen was not there. He went once or twice to Zachary Tan's shop, but he did not see Mr. Zanti again nor any one who spoke of London. He had not, however, forgotten Mr. Zanti's talk of looking-glasses. As he grew and his mind distinguished more clearly between fact and fancy, he saw that it was foolish to suppose that one saw anything in looking-glasses but the immediate view. Tables and chairs, walls and windows, dust and fire-places, there was the furniture of a looking-glass. Nevertheless during his first year at school he had, on occasions, climbed to his dormitory, seen that he was alone and then gazed into his glass and thought of London . . . London in his young brain, being a place of romantic fog, pantomime, oranges, fat, chivalrous old gentlemen. Queen Victoria and Punch and Judy. Nothing had happened—of course nothing had happened—it was only very cold and unpleasant up there all alone, and, at the end of it, a silly thing to do.
And then one night something did happen. He woke suddenly and heard, in the distance beyond the deep breathing of twenty-four sleepers, a clock strike three. He turned and lay on his back; he was very sleepy and he did not know why he had wakened. The long high room was dark, but directly opposite him beyond the end of his bed, the light seemed to shine full on to the face of his looking-glass. As he sat up in bed and looked at it it seemed to stand out like a sheet of silver.
He gripped the sides of the bed and stared. He rubbed his eyes. He could see no reflection in the glass at all but only this shining expanse, and then, as he looked at it, chat too seemed to pass away, and in its place at first confusedly, like smoke across the face of the glass, and then
