“It is an old wonder to me,” Mortmain mused aloud, “that the false and the genuine so often tend to live hand in hand—as with that dagger I purchased, for instance. You wonder why I chose the fraudulent over the real? Because of precisely this puzzling divide. The haft is not in the least what it pretends, being more beautiful than the reality it imitates; while the blade is as honest and moral and straightforward as any blade could possibly be. Are the two, together, a truth unspoken or a lie concealed? Without the lure of that charming handle, would anyone have picked up the dagger at all?
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