“Yes, it is too bad. Apparently a soul has formed in you.”
A soul?—that strange ancient word that was forgotten long ago....
“Is it ... v-very dangerous?” I stuttered.
“Incurable,” was the cut of the scissors.
“But more specifically, what is it? Somehow I cannot imagine—”
“You see ... how shall I put it? Are you a mathematician?”
“Yes.”
“Then you see ... imagine a plane, let us say this mirror. You and I are on its surface. You see? there we are, squinting our eyes to protect ourselves from the sunlight, or here is the bluish electric spark in that tube, there the shadow of that aero that just passed. All this is on the surface, is momentary only. Now imagine this very same surface softened by a flame so that nothing can any longer glide over it, so everything instead will penetrate into that mirror world which excites such curiosity in children. I assure you, children are not so foolish as we think they are! The surface becomes a volume, a body, a world; and inside the mirror,—within you, there is the sunshine, and the whirlwind caused by the aero propeller, and your trembling lips and someone else’s lips also. You see, the cold mirror reflects,
throws out, while this one absorbs; it keeps forever a trace of everything that touches it. Once you saw an imperceptible wrinkle on some one’s face, and this wrinkle is forever preserved within you; you may happen to hear in the silence a drop of water falling,—and you will hear it forever!”
“Yes, yes, that is it!” I grasped his hand. I could hear drops of water dripping in the silence from the faucet of a washstand and at once I knew it was forever.