VI Mrs. Tams had decided¹ to undertake an enterprise involving extreme gallantry—surpassing the physical. She went downstairs and stood outside the parlour door, which was not quite shut. Within the parlour, or throne-room, existed a beautiful and superior being, full of grace and authority, who belonged to a race quite different from her own, who was beyond her comprehension, who commanded her and kept her alive and paid money to her, who accepted her devotion casually² as a right, who treated her as a soft cushion between himself and the drift and inconvenience of the world, and who occasionally, as a supreme³ favour, caught her a smart slap on the back, which flattered her to excess. She went into the throne-room if she was called thither⁴, or if she had cleansing⁵ or tidying work there; she spoke⁶ to the superior being if he spoke to her. But she had never till then conceived the breath-taking scheme of entering the throne-room for a purpose of her own, and addressing the superior being without an invitation to do so.
 
Nevertheless, since by long practice she was courageous⁸, she meant to execute the scheme. And she began by knocking at the door. Although Rachel had seriously warned her that for a domestic servant to knock at the parlour door was a grave sin, she simply could not help knocking. Not to knock seemed to her wantonly sacrilegious. Thus she knocked, and a voice told her to come in.
 
There was the superior being, his back to the fire and his legs apart—formidable!
 
She curtsied—another sin according to the new code. Then she discovered that she was inarticulate.
 
"Well?"
 
Words burst from her—
 
"Her's crying her eyes out up yon, mester."
 
And Mrs. Tams also snivelled.
 
The superior being frowned and said testily⁹, yet not without a touch of careless toleration—
 
"Oh, get away, you silly old fool of a woman!"
 
Mrs. Tarns¹⁰ got away, not entirely¹¹ ill-content.
 
In the lobby she heard an unusual rapping on the glass of the front door, and sharply opened it to inform the late disturber that there existed a bell and a knocker for respectable people. A shabby youth gave her a note for "Louis Fores, Esq.," and said that there was an answer. So that she was forced to renew the enterprise of entering the throne-room.
 
In another couple of minutes Louis was running upstairs. His wife heard him, and shook in bed from excitement at the crisis which approached. But she could never have divined the nature of the phenomenon by which the unbridgable breach¹² was about to be closed.
 
"Louise!"
 
"Yes," she whimpered. Then she ventured to spy at his face through an interstice of the bedclothes, and saw thereon a most queer, white expression.
 
"Some one's just brought this. Read it."
 
He gave her the note, and she deciphered it as well as she could—
 
DEAR Louis,—If you aren't gone to bed I want to see you
to-night about that missing money of aunt's. I've something I
must tell you and Rachel. I'm at the "Three Tuns."
JULIAN MALDON.
"But what does he mean?" demanded Rachel, roused from her heavy mood of self-pity.
 
"I don't know."
 
"But what can he mean?" she insisted.
 
"Haven't a notion."
 
"But he must mean something!"
 
Louis asked—
 
"Well, what should you say he means?"
 
"How very strange!" Rachel murmured, not attempting to answer the question. "And the 'Three Tuns'! Why does he write from the 'Three Tuns'? What's he doing at the 'Three Tuns'? Isn't it a very low public-house? And everybody thought he was still in South Africa!... I suppose, then, it must have been him that we saw to-night."
 
"You may bet it was."
 
"Then why didn't he come straight here? That's what I want to know. He couldn't have called before we got here, because if he had Mrs. Tams would have told us."
 
Louis nodded.
 
"Didn't you think Mr. Batchgrew looked very queer when you mentioned Julian to-night?" Rachel continued to express her curiosity and wonder.
 
"No. I didn't notice anything particular," Louis replied vaguely¹³.
 
Throughout the conversation his manner was self-conscious. Rachel observed it, while feigning¹⁴ the contrary, and in her turn grew uneasy and even self-conscious also. Further, she had the feeling that Louis was depending upon her for support, and perhaps for initiative. His glance, though furtive¹⁵, had the appealing quality which rendered him sometimes so exquisitely¹⁶ wistful to her. As he stood over her by the bed, he made a peculiar¹⁷ compound of the negligent¹⁸, dominant¹⁹ masculine and the clinging feminine.
 
"And why didn't he let anybody know of his return?" Rachel went on.
 
Louis, veering²⁰ towards the masculine, clenched²¹ the immediate²² point—
 
"The question before the meeting is," he smiled demurely²³, "what answer am I to send?"
 
"I suppose you must see him to-night."
 
"Nothing else for it, is there? Well, I'll scribble²⁴ him 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 apprehensions²⁵ 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 conversed²⁶ in quite sincere tones of friendliness²⁷, but she had desired and expected an overt²⁸, tangible²⁹ 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 frivolous³⁰ an object for the dressing-table of a serious Five Towns woman. She had always referred to it as "the" hand-mirror—as though disdaining³¹ special ownership. She had derided³² it once by using it in front of Louis with the mimic³³ 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 enchanted³⁴ 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 improper³⁵ for the beholding³⁶ of the male eye, and Rachel to her astonishment³⁷ shared his opinion. She was "vain," and they were both well content. In taking it she touched his hand. He bent³⁸ and kissed her. Each of them was ravaged³⁹ 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 simplicity⁴⁰ they knew not why. And as they kissed they hated Julian, and the past, and the whole world, for thus coming between them and

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