im a bit of a
note."

"But I shan't see him, Louis."

"No?"

In an instant Rachel thought to herself: "He doesn't want me to see
him."

Aloud she said: "I should have to dress myself all over again.
Besides, I'm not fit to be seen."

She was referring, without any apparent sort of shame, to the redness
of her eyes.

"Well, I'll see him by myself, then."

Louis turned to leave the bedroom. Whereat Rachel was very
disconcerted and disappointed. Although the startling note from Julian
had alarmed her and excited in her profound apprehensions whose very
nature she would scarcely admit to herself, the main occupation of her
mind was still her own quarrel with Louis. The quarrel was now over,
for they had conversed in quite sincere tones of friendliness, but she
had desired and expected an overt, tangible proof and symbol of peace.
That proof and symbol was a kiss.

Louis was at the door ... he was beyond the door ... she was lost.

"Louis!" she cried.

He put his face in at the door.

"Will you just pass me my hand-mirror. It's on the dressing-table."

Louis was thrilled by this simple request. The hand-mirror had arrived
in the house as a wedding-present. It was backed with tortoise-shell,
and seemingly the one thing that had reconciled Rachel the
downright to the possession of a hand-mirror was the fact that the
tortoise-shell was real tortoise-shell. She had "made out" that a
hand-mirror was too frivolous an object for the dressing-table of
a serious Five Towns woman. She had always referred to it as "the"
hand-mirror--as though disdaining special ownership. She had derided
it once by using it in front of Louis with the mimic foolish graces of
an empty-headed doll. And now she was asking for it because she wanted
it; and she had said "my" hand-mirror!

This revelation of the odalisque in his Rachel enchanted Louis, and
incidentally it also enchanted Rachel. She had employed a desperate
remedy, and the result on both of them filled her with a most
surprising gladness. Louis judged it to be deliciously right that
Rachel should be anxious to know whether her weeping had indeed made
her into an object improper for the beholding of the male eye, and
Rachel to her astonishment shared his opinion. She was "vain," and
they were both well content. In taking it she touched his hand. He
bent and kissed her. Each of them was ravaged by formidable fears for
the future, tremendously disturbed in secret by the mysteri