Part XXXV

The morning was full of sunlight and hope. Edna could see

before her no denial—only the promise of excessive joy. She lay

in bed awake, with bright eyes full of speculation. "He loves you,

poor fool." If she could but get that conviction firmly fixed in

her mind, what mattered about the rest? She felt she had been

childish and unwise the night before in giving herself over to

despondency. She recapitulated the motives which no doubt

explained Robert's reserve. They were not insurmountable; they

would not hold if he really loved her; they could not hold against

her own passion, which he must come to realize in time. She

pictured him going to his business that morning. She even saw how

he was dressed; how he walked down one street, and turned the

corner of another; saw him bending over his desk, talking to people

who entered the office, going to his lunch, and perhaps watching

for her on the street. He would come to her in the afternoon or

evening, sit and roll his cigarette, talk a little, and go away as

he had done the night before. But how delicious it would be to have

him there with her! She would have no regrets, nor seek to penetrate

his reserve if he still chose to wear it.

Edna ate her breakfast only half dressed. The maid brought

her a delicious printed scrawl from Raoul, expressing his love,

asking her to send him some bonbons, and telling her they had found

that morning ten tiny white pigs all lying in a row beside Lidie's

big white pig.

A letter also came from her husband, saying he hoped to be

back early in March, and then they would get ready for that journey

abroad which he had promised her so long, which he felt now fully

able to afford; he felt able to travel as people should, without

any thought of small economies—thanks to his recent speculations

in Wall Street.

Much to her surprise she received a note from Arobin, written

at midnight from the club. It was to say good morning to her, to

hope she had slept well, to assure her of his devotion, which he

trusted she in some faintest manner returned.

All these letters were pleasing to her. She answered the

children in a cheerful frame of mind, promising them bonbons, and

congratulating them upon their happy find of the little pigs.

She answered her husband with friendly evasiveness,—not with

any fixed design to mislead him, only because all sense of reality

had gone out of her life; she had abandoned herself to Fate, and

awaited the consequences with indifference.

To Arobin's note she made no reply. She put it under

Celestine's stove-lid.

Edna worked several hours with much spirit. She saw no one

but a picture dealer, who asked her if it were true that she was

going abroad to study in Paris.

She said possibly she might, and he negotiated with her for

some Parisian studies to reach him in time for the holiday trade in

December.

Robert did not come that day. She was keenly disappointed.

He did not come the following day, nor the next. Each morning

she awoke with hope, and each night she was a prey to despondency.

She was tempted to seek him out. But far from yielding to the impulse,

she avoided any occasion which might throw her in his way. She did not

go to Mademoiselle Reisz's nor pass by Madame Lebrun's, as she might

have done if he had still been in Mexico.

When Arobin, one night, urged her to drive with him, she

went—out to the lake, on the Shell Road. His horses were full of

mettle, and even a little unmanageable. She liked the rapid gait

at which they spun along, and the quick, sharp sound of the horses'

hoofs on the hard road. They did not stop anywhere to eat or to

drink. Arobin was not needlessly imprudent. But they ate and they

drank when they regained Edna's little dining-room—which was

comparatively early in the evening.

It was late when he left her. It was getting to be more than

a passing whim with Arobin to see her and be with her. He had

detected the latent sensuality, which unfolded under his delicate

sense of her nature's requirements like a torpid, torrid, sensitive

blossom.

There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor

was there hope when she awoke in the morning.