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 mysterious word
from Julian; and yet that kiss stood unique among their kisses, and
in their simplicity they knew not why.
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