Part VI
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| | 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. | |
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| | A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,—the | |
| | light which, showing the way, forbids it. | |
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| | 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. | |
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| | 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. | |
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| | 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! | |
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| | 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. | |
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| | The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea | |
| | is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace. | |
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