ABSTRACT
Two facts, one well-known and often recorded, the other less known and seldom, if ever, related to the first: the first that in her old age Queen Elizabeth ordered all the mirrors, in public rooms where she might pass, to be covered with curtains; the second that she ordered great mirrors, enough to surface walls, ceiling, floor, for her inmost bathing chambers. In a work of fiction, where imagination is given more freedom, the two things can properly be joined together. The human imagination, an energy in motion and never abstract, permits the wedding and intercourse of thought and feeling, each responsive to, respectful of the other. The past, however, is chiefly fiction and must be imagined before it can exist.
