u 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 biting conviction 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 w