"Yes," agreed Madame Ratignolle. "I think it was showing us
all--you especially--very little consideration. It wouldn't have

surprised me in any of the others; those Lebruns are all given to
heroics. But I must say I should never have expected such a thing

from Robert. Are you not coming down? Come on, dear; it doesn't
look friendly."

"No," said Edna, a little sullenly. "I can't go to the
trouble of dressing again; I don't feel like it."

"You needn't dress; you look all right; fasten a belt around
your waist. Just look at me!"

"No," persisted Edna; "but you go on. Madame Lebrun might be
offended if we both stayed away."

Madame Ratignolle kissed Edna good-night, and went away, being
in truth rather desirous of joining in the general and animated

conversation which was still in progress concerning Mexico and the
Mexicans.

Somewhat later Robert came up, carrying his hand-bag.
"Aren't you feeling well?" he asked.

"Oh, well enough. Are you going right away?"
He lit a match and looked at his watch. "In twenty minutes,"

he said. The sudden and brief flare of the match emphasized the
darkness for a while. He sat down upon a stool which the children

had left out on the porch.
"Get a chair," said Edna.

"This will do," he replied. He put on his soft hat and
nervously took it off again, and wiping his face with his

handkerchief, complained of the heat.
"Take the fan," said Edna, offering it to him.

"Oh, no! Thank you. It does no good; you have to stop fanning
some time, and feel all the more uncomfortable afterward."

"That's one of the ridiculous things which men always say. I
have never known one to speak otherwise of fanning. How long will

you be gone?"
"Forever, perhaps. I don't know. It depends upon a good many things."

"Well, in case it shouldn't be forever, how long will it be?"
"I don't know."

"This seems to me perfectlypreposterous and uncalled for. I
don't like it. I don't understand your motive for silence and

mystery, never saying a word to me about it this morning." He
remained silent, not offering to defend himself. He only said,

after a moment:
"Don't part from me in any ill humor. I never knew you to be

out of patience with me before."
"I don't want to part in any ill humor," she said. "But can't

you understand? I've grown used to seeing you, to having you with
me all the time, and your action seems unfriendly, even unkind.

You don't even offer an excuse for it. Why, I was planning to be together,
thinking of how pleasant it would be to see you in the city next winter."

"So was I," he blurted. "Perhaps that's the--" He stood up
suddenly and held out his hand. "Good-by, my dear Mrs. Pontellier;

good-by. You won't--I hope you won't completely forget me."
She clung to his hand, striving to detain him.

"Write to me when you get there, won't you, Robert?" she entreated.
"I will, thank you. Good-by."

How unlike Robert! The merest acquaintance would have said
something more emphatic than "I will, thank you; good-by," to such

a request.
He had evidently already taken leave of the people over at the

house, for he descended the steps and went to join Beaudelet, who
was out there with an oar across his shoulder waiting for Robert.

They walked away in the darkness. She could only hear Beaudelet's
voice; Robert had apparently not even spoken a word of greeting to

his companion.
Edna bit her handkerchief convulsively, striving to hold back

and to hide, even from herself as she would have hidden from
another, the emotion which was troubling--tearing--her. Her eyes

were brimming with tears.
For the first time she recognized the symptoms of infatuation

which she had felt incipiently as a child, as a girl in her
earliest teens, and later as a young woman. The recognition did

not lessen the reality, the poignancy of the revelation by any
suggestion or promise of instability. The past was nothing to her;

offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a
mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone

was significant; was hers, to torture her as it was doing then with
the bitingconviction that she had lost that which she had held,

that she had been denied that which her impassioned, newly awakened
being demanded.

XVI
"Do you miss your friend greatly?" asked Mademoiselle Reisz

one morning as she came creeping up behind Edna, who had just left
her cottage on her way to the beach. She spent much of her time in

the water since she had acquired finally the art of swimming. As
their stay at Grand Isle drew near its close, she felt that she

could not give too much time to a diversion which afforded her the
only real pleasurable moments that she knew. When Mademoiselle

Reisz came and touched her upon the shoulder and spoke to her, the
woman seemed to echo the thought which was ever in Edna's mind; or,

better, the feeling which constantly possessed her.
Robert's going had some way taken the brightness, the color,

the meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in
no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded

garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing. She sought him
everywhere--in others whom she induced to talk about him. She went

up in the mornings to Madame Lebrun's room, braving the clatter of
the old sewing-machine. She sat there and chatted at intervals as

Robert had done. She gazed around the room at the pictures and
photographs hanging upon the wall, and discovered in some corner an

old family album, which she examined with the keenest interest,
appealing to Madame Lebrun for enlightenment concerning the many

figures and faces which she discovered between its pages.
There was a picture of Madame Lebrun with Robert as a baby,

seated in her lap, a round-faced infant with a fist in his mouth.
The eyes alone in the baby suggested the man. And that was he also

in kilts, at the age of five, wearing long curls and holding a whip
in his hand. It made Edna laugh, and she laughed, too, at the portrait

in his first long trousers; while another interested her, taken when he
left for college, looking thin, long-faced, with eyes full of fire,

ambition and great intentions. But there was no recent picture,
none which suggested the Robert who had gone away five days ago,

leaving a void and wilderness behind him.
"Oh, Robert stopped having his pictures taken when he had to

pay for them himself! He found wiser use for his money, he says,"
explained Madame Lebrun. She had a letter from him, written before

he left New Orleans. Edna wished to see the letter, and Madame
Lebrun told her to look for it either on the table or the dresser,

or perhaps it was on the mantelpiece.
The letter was on the bookshelf. It possessed the greatest

interest and attraction for Edna; the envelope, its size and shape,
the post-mark, the handwriting. She examined every detail of the

outside before opening it. There were only a few lines, setting
forth that he would leave the city that afternoon, that he had

packed his trunk in good shape, that he was well, and sent her his
love and begged to be affectionately remembered to all. There was

no special message to Edna except a postscriptsaying that if Mrs.
Pontellier desired to finish the book which he had been reading to

her, his mother would find it in his room, among other books there
on the table. Edna experienced a pang of jealousy because he had