To glance in the mirror over her bureau at her own resources of face and figure was a natural action for a young thing in such harassing doubt. At present, however on the subject of her looks, Rachel had all of a child's ignorance. She was no more capable of appreciating the sensitive changeful beauty of her colouring and expression than a canary bird is of appreciating the beauty of its yellow plumage.
Turning from the mirror to a window, she lost herself in reverie. Her thoughts returned again and again to the vision of two eyes that entered audaciously into hers,--two eyes with a mind in them,--two good lips laughing and talking from the covert of a curling beard; and as she studied the exciting vision, the gloom lifted from her face. It was indeed a great honour to be the confidante of such a man, she assured herself; and once more was isolated by the realization on a dizzy eminence above all her girl companions.
Unconscious of the grim humour that lurked in the fact of their having selected it as a place to foregather, Emil and Rachel continued to meet at the old Burying Point. No other lovers came there, and as deaths were infrequent in Old Harbour and a funeral pageant an event, they were practically secure from interruption. There, where the wind bent the grass above the graves with a sound that struck pleasantly on the ear and the insect world was all abroad on busy wings, they found the isolation their spirits craved. The place was, at most, but a setting for their two selves, for their sweet, intoxicating emotions.
Emil would look at Rachel pensively, almost appealingly. She stirred in him depths of tenderness and often he would have been tempted into some indiscretion had not her Arcadian innocence disconcerted him. With a shrug of the shoulders and a sigh, he would turn away from her as if offended at something. Though neither of them guessed it, what raised the level of the situation and decreased its dangers, was the unflagging interest she exhibited in his work. A woman's interest in his achievement is always fruitful for a man. For the exuberant and egotistic inventor, it was as fuel to flame. It immensely increased his powers.
Had anyone, prompted by curiosity, troubled himself to spy on the pair, he would have discovered an enthusiastic young fellow ranting on matters scientific and a slip of a girl sitting nearby with delight and despair depicted on her mobile countenance. The delight, he would have remarked, was a fluctuating emotion; the despair in danger of becoming a lasting one.