oman 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
postscript saying that if Mrs. Pontellier desired to finish the book