Today in class, we discussed every appearance of what Irene Redfield calls her friend Clare Kendry's "caressing smile" in Nella Larsen's 1929 novel "Passing": "[...] she noted the peculiar caressing smile [...]." / "At that reply Clare turned on Irene her seductive caressing smile [...]" / "Clare's ivory face was what it always was, beautiful and caressing." / "[...] Clare had a trick of sliding down ivory lids over astonishing black eyes and then lifting them suddenly and turning on a caressing smile." / "Gone! The soft white face, the bright hair, the disturbing scarlet mouth, the dreaming eyes, the caressing smile, the whole torturing loveliness that had been Clare Kendry." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 September 2026)