When Jane led me by the hand and introduced me to him after his lecture, I saw up close how sympathetic his eyes were, but sad too. I’d heard whispers that his wife had succumbed to tuberculosis when Jane was small, and that he’d raised her to young womanhood by himself. He looked at Jane with the same pride that she did him, didn’t talk down to her, but straight across, as if she were capable of any understanding. He cocked his head when he asked her a question, waiting to hear her opinion. Had he covered the material too quickly? Too much history? Enough explanation of each instrument’s capabilities? I felt, by the way he shook my hand firmly, that Jane’s endorsement of me was good enough for him. We lingered over his cabinet of curiosities, laid out on green velvet, which I was careful not to touch. When Jane excused herself to say good-bye to a group of girls near the door, I didn’t know whether to follow.

“Here,” said John Arden, offering a small magnifying glass from his collection, beautiful in its simplicity. “Look through this, and tell me what you see.” He held out the walnut he’d used in his demonstration.

I pulled the glass close to my eye, but it made the world all wrong.

“Move it near and far until things come into focus. It’s different for everyone, since our own eyes are a convex lens, infinite shapes, no pair alike.”

I soon found the walnut shell in full relief.

“It’s said we have the Romans to thank, Emperor Nero, I think, who looked through a chip of some gemstone or other to better see actors on the stage. Don’t remember who figured out how to concentrate the sun’s rays to coax a flame. Useful, that. But our own Sir Francis Bacon was the first to turn it to a pure scientific use. Imagine, simply because the glass is thicker in the center, it changes everything. Marvelous, really.”

“It is,” I said, studying the intricate grooves of the shell.

“Also called a quizzer,” he said. “I suppose you know that. Jane reminds me I need not always explain everything.”

“Oh, not at all. I’ve heard of them. Just never held one in my hand.”