Jane cocked her head to the side, staring at the prism. All her life she had known what prisms did, and yet using one with glamour had never occurred to her. Doubting her memory of the glamour for rainbows, she grabbed another fold and divided it to match the colours Miette’s crystal cast. To weave the rainbow, she split the glamour in exactly the way the prism split light. Jane let her vision expand into the ether, watching the sunbeam she had created for Miette and the way it neatly split itself inside the prism to emerge on the other side in a collection of dancing rainbows. The sole difference between Jane’s glamoured rainbow and the prism’s rainbow was that the glamoured one was fixed, unless Jane added additional folds and threads to make it dance.

Miette’s prism took a simple glamoured sunbeam and scattered it into rainbows, which she was moving with no effort.

The glass, in effect, contained the pattern of a glamour which could be moved.

In a flash, Jane’s head filled with the pattern of other glamours, and how each visual illusion was composed of the threads which might be described in the colours of a rainbow. The way they bent and twisted could – she was certain – be recorded in glass.

The epiphany was so strong that Jane was at the foot of the stairs before she realized she had decided to stand.

‘Where are you going?’ Miette called.

‘To find my husband.’ Jane paused only long enough to say, ‘Thank you for the rainbows!’

SEVEN

Ensconced in Glamour

Jane matched intent with action and, gathering her skirts, dashed across the courtyard to the studio. Bursting inside, she tried to slow down to a semblance of reserve, but her excitement moved her through the space at a speed which only narrowly escaped being a trot. Jane spotted M. Chastain standing with M. Archambault, the student who had created the glamour à la Chinoiserie.

‘Madame! What can I do for you?’ Chastain left M. Archambault and met her half-way.

‘Forgive me for troubling you, but I wanted a word with my husband.’ She looked past Chastain, expecting to see Vincent ensconced in the glamour.

‘I am sorry your trip is for nothing. He left shortly after you.’ He smiled. ‘Is there anything I can help you with instead?’

‘No, thank you.’ Though Jane was bursting to talk of her idea, she wanted to share it with Vincent first. On reflection, she thought that it was probably prudent as well, for if there were a flaw in her scheme, he would spot it. ‘Did he say where he was going?’

‘Back to the house, I believe.’