In the portrait I am younger, and made a queen—oh, balls, I think I’m supposed to be Tarset—and I stand in stark opposition to a spirit, an ugly thing that the artist has rendered in a succession of touches so that it is rising out of the landscape. Each stroke is barely more than an outline, a ripple in the paint, and yet together they produce a twisted, stork-legged shadow which both reaches out to grasp me and recoils from my touch. The demon from my dream. And looking across the Chamber I can see—because this banquet would not be complete without one more course—the reflection of this image in the first panel. East and west are different, but the arrangement of pieces is the same. One reflects the other, or follows from it. In the conventional flow of time, west follows east. The sun rises and sets in that natural sequence. But in the Chamber of Isis, time is said to be malleable and truth may be reversed.