The dawn of every love seems haloed by the sense—the beautiful illusion—of fatedness, as the lovers discover in elated disbelief the staggering number of things they have had in common since long before they met: the favorite poem, the esoteric obsession, the freckle on the same spot of the same thigh. They seem to have lived two strands of the same life, long ago unwreathed by some cruel chance and only just now entwined into wholeness. They seem to be thinking the same thoughts. This sense pervaded Rachel and Dorothy’s intensely deepening attachment. “Darling,” Rachel wrote, “I wonder if
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