into the house. She had thought of speaking to the cook
concerning her blunders of the previous night; but Mr. Pontellier had
saved her that disagreeable mission, for which she was so poorly fitted.
Mr. Pontellier's arguments were usually convincing with those whom he
employed. He left home feeling quite sure that he and Edna would sit
down that evening, and possibly a few subsequent evenings, to a dinner
deserving of the name.

Edna spent an hour or two in looking over some of her old sketches.
She could see their shortcomings and defects, which were glaring in her
eyes. She tried to work a little, but found she was not in the humor.
Finally she gathered together a few of the sketches--those which she
considered the least discreditable; and she carried them with her when,
a little later, she dressed and left the house. She looked handsome and
distinguished in her street gown. The tan of the seashore had left
her face, and her forehead was smooth, white, and polished beneath her
heavy, yellow-brown hair. There were a few freckles on her face, and a
small, dark mole near the under lip and one on the temple, half-hidden
in her hair.

As Edna walked along the street she was thinking of Robert. She was
still under the spell of her infatuation. She had tried to forget him,
realizing the inutility of remembering. But the thought of him was like
an obsession, ever pressing itself upon her. It was not that she dwelt
upon details of their acquaintance, or recalled in any special or
peculiar way his personality; it was his being, his existence, which
dominated her thought, fading sometimes as if it would melt into the
mist of the forgotten, reviving again with an intensity which filled her
with an incomprehensible longing.

Edna was on her way to Madame Ratignolle's. Their intimacy, begun at
Grand Isle, had not declined, and they had seen each other with some
frequency since their return to the city. The Ratignolles lived at no
great distance from Edna's home, on the corner of a side street, where
Monsieur Ratignolle owned and conducted a drug store which enjoyed a
steady and prosperous trade. His father had been in the business before
him, and Monsieur Ratignolle stood well in the community and bore an
enviable reputation for integrity and clearheadedness. His family lived
in commodious apartments over the store, having an entrance on the side
within the porte cochere. There was something which Edna thought very
French, very