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.