ademoiselle's geranium; "then if you had not met me here to-day you
wouldn't--when--that is, didn't you mean to come and see me?"

"Of course, I should have gone to see you. There have been so many
things--" he turned the leaves of Mademoiselle's music nervously. "I
started in at once yesterday with the old firm. After all there is as
much chance for me here as there was there--that is, I might find it
profitable some day. The Mexicans were not very congenial."

So he had come back because the Mexicans were not congenial; because
business was as profitable here as there; because of any reason, and not
because he cared to be near her. She remembered the day she sat on the
floor, turning the pages of his letter, seeking the reason which was
left untold.

She had not noticed how he looked--only feeling his presence; but she
turned deliberately and observed him. After all, he had been absent but
a few months, and was not changed. His hair--the color of hers--waved
back from his temples in the same way as before. His skin was not more
burned than it had been at Grand Isle. She found in his eyes, when he
looked at her for one silent moment, the same tender caress, with an
added warmth and entreaty which had not been there before the same
glance which had penetrated to the sleeping places of her soul and
awakened them.

A hundred times Edna had pictured Robert's return, and imagined their
first meeting. It was usually at her home, whither he had sought her out
at once. She always fancied him expressing or betraying in some way his
love for her. And here, the reality was that they sat ten feet apart,
she at the window, crushing geranium leaves in her hand and smelling
them, he twirling around on the piano stool, saying:

"I was very much surprised to hear of Mr. Pontellier's absence; it's a
wonder Mademoiselle Reisz did not tell me; and your moving--mother told
me yesterday. I should think you would have gone to New York with him,
or to Iberville with the children, rather than be bothered here with
housekeeping. And you are going abroad, too, I hear. We shan't have
you at Grand Isle next summer; it won't seem--do you see much of
Mademoiselle Reisz? She often spoke of you in the few letters she
wrote."

"Do you remember that you promised to write to me when you went away?" A
flush overspread his whole face.

"I couldn't believe that my letters would be of any interest to you."

"That is an excuse; it isn't the truth." E