Rachel's drug addiction?

Rachel is trying too hard. Not to look like a wife. She has no delusions that DH is shopping for a new wife. She knows the score. She is trying too hard to appear to be as healthy as she was when we first met her in the film. She's been using so much that now she's covered in bruises, has dark circles under her eyes, and an unhealthy pallor. So she tries to distract from all that by dressing fashionably in what she thinks passes for classy and chic. But the change in style only emphasizes the greater change in her.

Watch Rachel as she is walking across the street to come into the restaurant, huddled in her coat, frail and beaten. That's the aura she gives out as she walks toward DH.

"I'd never ask you to trust me. It's the cry of a guilty soul."

it think this is right on, but for the 'in love with him' part. in desperate need for him would be best, but a shallow girl like her would misjudge her tugging emotions for the real thing.

the look on her face was no longer haughty and challenging but desperate and needy, not what DH was bargaining for. Nothing worse than a clingy mistress.

So many women think they can marry into money. I have seen it with people i know - the wealthy are a tribe and will not let you in if you are not respectable in any way. She would have had a better chance if she actually DANCED.

Yeah, I think jinglybeads is closest to my take on this great scene. When I saw Rachel getting dressed up with the help of Igby and Russell, I immediately thought, "She's trying to get something from DH." Or even, "THEY're trying to get something from DH." I think it's the friction between her addiction getting worse and her dressing like something she's not that caused DH to silently erupt and walk out. There's all sorts of loaded intimations in this scene that DH could be and probably is responding to. Rachel's dressing like his Hamptons social set, when DH wanted something sexy and "Downtown." He wants an escape, not another wife. Rachel wants something more than usual--whether it's money he wasn't planning to give her, a commitment, or respect for being something other than an artsy downtown lover, I'm not quite clear. And it is clear that Rachel is wearing her wants and her desperation on her sleeve more than usual--or at least, in a different setting. DH probably knows that she has a party lifestyle, but seeing her in the daylight in a fancy restaurant in uptown clothes with her addiction not very under control, it's an ugly contrast for him to witness. Whereas, if he were to see her wasted in her glam dance clothes at a party, he'd just go home with her. I think it's actually the complexity of this scene that makes it work well.