Gulf, whose
sonorous murmur reached her like a loving but imperative entreaty.

"Oh, come!" he insisted. "You mustn't miss your bath. Come on. The water
must be delicious; it will not hurt you. Come."

He reached up for her big, rough straw hat that hung on a peg outside
the door, and put it on her head. They descended the steps, and walked
away together toward the beach. The sun was low in the west and the
breeze was soft and warm.

VI

Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the beach with
Robert, she should in the first place have declined, and in the second
place have followed in obedience to one of the two contradictory
impulses which impelled her.

A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,--the light
which, showing the way, forbids it.

At that early period it served but to bewilder her. It moved her to
dreams, to thoughtfulness, to the shadowy anguish which had overcome her
the midnight when she had abandoned herself to tears.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in
the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an
individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a
ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of
twenty-eight--perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased
to vouchsafe to any woman.

But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily
vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever
emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!

The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring,
murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of
solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is
sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

VII

Mrs. Pontellier was not a woman given to confidences, a characteristic
hitherto contrary to her nature. Even as a child she had lived her
own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had
apprehended instinctively the dual life--that outward existence which
conforms, the inward life which questions.

That summer at Grand Isle she began to loosen a little the mantle of
reserve that had always enveloped her. There may have been--there
must have been--influences, both subtle and apparent, working in their
several ways to i