"Do you know anything of Frankenstein's wonderful Magic Reciprocals, sometimes called Harmonic Responses?"[4] he asked. "How I longed for his marvelous power, so that I might experiment with them. But they were far beyond my skill, and also, perhaps, too scientific and geometric for my purpose; and so I was forced to discard them and begin afresh in my own way. I have had reasonable success, although I have not yet reached the purity of color nor the brilliancy that I wish. I do not know that mortal man ever can. I have tried all sorts of experiments--lines of silver crossed with lines of gold; prismatic threads of silk; and now I have abandoned them all, and am beginning again, perhaps for the fortieth time. But if I am only able to do it, nothing can give me greater happiness. I can close my eyes in peace at last."
After he had shown me his experiments, he removed the little frame from the window, closed the sliding shutter on the side, and, turning the circular ventilator, asked the driver to drive on.
"Now for an extended view," he said, and he opened the shutter of one of the front windows, and then of the other on each side of the mirror. What a vista of loveliness! A long perspective of glowing halos, vanishing down the street through the flying snow, until they were mere specks of light in the distance. The whole atmosphere was filled with circular rainbows, and again he dwelt on their beauty. They glowed with ultramarine, with delicate green, with gold and silver, and like light from burnished copper, and our little vehicle seemed a moving palace of delight as we drove on through the blinding storm. Turning into one of the narrower streets, away from the electric lights, we saw the long line of receding gas-lamps, each with its softly subdued nimbus, and he said in a low and gentle voice, almost a whisper, "The street of halos."
When he had closed the shutters again he said, "Let me show you my cabinet of colors and working tools." He pulled out a shallow drawer, and there, on small porcelain plaques (the kind used by water-color painters), side by side, in regular order, was every shade of red, from the faintest pink to the deepest crimson. He opened the next drawer, and instead of the red was an arrangement of blues, from delicate turquoise to deepest ultramarine. In the third drawer was an arrangement of yellows, running from Naples to deepest cadmium.