"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

postscript saying 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 written to his mother rather than to her.




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