It was, taken in stride, his dance to impose suddenly and with premeditated direction upon the unsuspecting elbow that offered itself, eternally, singular to his whim (Horatio! What a pleasant surprise-). He steered him purposefully into a corner, dodging the others: I have been meaning to speak with you; you must tell me.

Steered by the Elbow the Eternal Unsuspecting: what?

Hamlet: You know very well what I'm referring to.

Horatio: I assure you, I don't.

Hamlet: I see… Very well then, I shall have to ask you plainly: what has been

troubling you?

Horatio: Why . . . nothing, my lord.

Hamlet: 'Nothing, my lord,' quoth he! How nimbly he slips behind his mirror. O but we will corner him by and by; he musn't think us so encumbered by our position as to overlook him. I tell you I'll observe as well as you do; there is something on your mind and I will have it from you. Come, tell me what you are thinking.

Horatio: I. . . I am watching you.

Hamlet: Ah, he is watching me . . . how very Horatio of him. And yet I dare guess there is something in it more than the usual; pray tell what do you mean by that?

H: I mean what I say.

H: No more?

H: No less.

H: Ah.

…Again with the mirror trick.

In that case, you must be mistaken: I am not thinking anything out of the ordinary.

Horatio: Mirror Trick? [laughter his cominglence] You overestimate me.

Hamlet: Do I?

Horatio: My powers of observation are, in practice, limited: one may collect a great deal and yet, lacking assumption, conclude nothing.

Ham: Yet you insist on reflecting me-

Hor: Only insofar as you imagine.

Ham: Ah.

He faltered. The space, it occurred to him, had been transfigured: a little muse had wandered in out of the storm and now stumbled, silent as the sky in want of a direction that he could not give. Hesitant, veiled in the mists of that beyond from whence it had emerged, it spoke to him in whispers of a distant landscape, forms to which he had no reply . . .

. . . and how far is that, I wonder?

A little flurry of snow-crystals unfurled across the windowpane.

Hor: I can assure you, my lord, I wouldn't know.