The Awakening, and Selected Short StoriesAlderstilpasset version

A green and yellow parrot in a cage outside kept shouting in French and English, and a mockingbird whistled over and over until it made people laugh or want to plug their ears. Inside the summer pension on Grand Isle, everyone was busy and noisy. The Farival twins were playing a piano duet, a lady in black walked back and forth with her rosary, and Madame Lebrun gave quick orders as she moved. Under the water-oaks, two little boys played croquet while their nurse followed them.

Mr. Léonce Pontellier left the main house because of the racket and went to his cottage. He was forty, neatly bearded, and wore glasses. He lit a cigar and watched a white sunshade coming from the beach. Under it were his wife, Edna, and young Robert Lebrun.

They climbed the steps and sat down beside him. He scolded in a half-teasing voice that it was silly to bathe at such an hour, then looked at his wife the way some people look at a favorite object that's gotten damp and a bit scratched. Edna quietly held out her hand for the rings she had given him before swimming.

He dropped them into her palm. She slid them on and laughed to Robert, who laughed back. They tried to tell him a funny story about their swim, but it wasn't as funny when explained. Mr. Pontellier yawned and said he might go play billiards at Klein's.

He asked Robert to come with him. Robert admitted he'd rather stay and talk with Mrs. Pontellier. "Send him away when he bores you," Mr. Pontellier said, accepting the umbrella she offered and walking off. He told the boys he'd bring back candy and peanuts.

After Mr. Pontellier left, Robert rolled a cigarette. He and Edna talked about the water, the wind, the twins' music, the people away at mass, and her boys chasing each other in the grass. Robert talked about himself too: every summer he promised he would go to Mexico, but never did. In the city he had a small job in a house of trade and spoke English, French, and Spanish.

Edna told him about her father's Mississippi plantation and her girlhood in Kentucky. A letter from her sister back home had reached her that day; the sister was engaged. When she finished reading aloud, Edna went in to dress for the early dinner. Robert ran off to entertain her children, who adored him.

Very late that night, after the children had been asleep for hours, Mr. Pontellier came home in a cheerful mood, full of little stories from Klein's. He woke Edna as he walked around undressing and piling coins and crumpled bills onto the bureau, still talking. She answered him sleepily. Then he decided one of their boys must be feverish and needed attention at once.

Edna, sure the child was fine, said nothing. He scolded her for what he called neglect. "If it is not a mother's place to look after her children, whose is it?"

He went to bed and finally slept. Edna was now wide awake, sitting on the edge of the bed with her head bent down.

After a while she slipped outside to the porch and rocked in the darkness. The cottages lay quiet as if nothing in the world moved except one distant lamp and the endless, hushed roar of the Gulf, always talking, always calling. She cried without knowing why. The crying surprised her, the way clouds suddenly gather and pour rain on a hot day. Mosquitoes drove her back inside.

The next morning, Léonce left for New Orleans on the steamer as usual and was his calm, pleasant self again. He left Edna half of the cash from the night before; she smoothed the bills and joked that now she could buy a handsome wedding gift for her sister Janet. He laughed and kissed her goodbye, promising the boys sweets. A little later a box came from the city full of fine fruit, patés, syrups, and candy. Edna shared it with everyone, and all the ladies said Mr. Pontellier was the best husband in the world. Edna, who didn't much care for such talk, said she knew of none better.

That summer Grand Isle was full of what people there called mother-women—ladies who lived for their babies and husbands and seemed glad to forget their own wishes. Adèle Ratignolle was the most shining example of them all. She had hair like spun gold and big blue eyes. Her hands were beautiful, each finger perfect. She often came to sit with Edna and sew.

The day the box of treats arrived, Adèle brought a clever pattern for a baby's winter nightgown and explained every stitch while Edna cut the cloth on the gallery floor. Edna tried not to look bored. Robert sat nearby, grinning.

They passed the sweets around, and Adèle took a strip of nougat and worried out loud if it would hurt her.

She had three children already and spoke freely of a fourth on the way, and of how she felt about it. When she talked about childbirth, or when other Creole ladies freely told things Edna thought should be private, the color would rush to Edna's face. People here were never prudish; to them, honesty and purity didn't mean silence. At first it shocked Edna. But with time she learned they could talk so openly and still be deeply proper.

Robert had a habit every summer: he attached himself to some lady and devoted himself to her, half joking and half serious, like a little knight. He had worshiped another woman for two seasons until she died; after that he hovered around Adèle like a faithful page, until her husband appeared, and then he was tossed aside with a laugh. This summer, he drifted into Edna's shadow instead. No one at Grand Isle was surprised.

Edna had brought a sketchbook and colors to the island. Whenever she drew, she felt a kind of quiet satisfaction. That afternoon she felt like drawing Adèle, who looked to Edna like a calm, warm Madonna. Robert settled on a step below her and watched. When he leaned his head lightly against Edna's arm, she pushed him away gently, then more firmly when he did it again.

She didn't scold and he didn't apologize; they both let the moment pass. When she was done, the drawing didn't look like Adèle at all. Disappointed, she dragged a streak of paint across it and crumpled the paper. A soft sea breeze slipped over the gallery; Adèle suddenly felt faint, and Edna fetched cologne and a fan and bathed her friend's face.

Something had begun in Edna that summer—something she couldn't name yet. Sometimes she would refuse an invitation and then, a little later, give in and follow someone, as if two small voices inside her called in different directions. She felt a dim light in her mind that seemed to show a path, then warn her away at the same time. Most of all, the sea itself seemed to be calling her. It never stopped whispering. Its soft touch and steady sound pulled her toward long thoughts and daydreams that were deeper than sleep.

Edna was not used to confiding in people. Even as a girl she had carried a quiet life inside herself where she saw and questioned things, while on the outside she behaved the way others expected. But this summer she loosened her reserve a little. Part of that was because of Adèle, whose gentle beauty and open, affectionate ways drew Edna out. One bright, windy day, the two women walked arm in arm down to the beach under a big white sunshade. Adèle carried her needlework in spite of Edna's teasing her to leave it. They did not plan to bathe; they simply wanted to sit near the water and be alone.

They opened Edna's bath-house only to borrow its little porch for shade. They took off collars and hats, and Edna fanned them both. The wind tugged at their hair and skirts. Far away, a few figures splashed and shouted; near them, the lady in black whispered her prayers and two sweethearts hid under the children's tent and spoke in sighs.

Edna stared at the water and sky. When Adèle asked what she was thinking, Edna said "Nothing," then corrected herself. She remembered being a little girl in Kentucky, wading through green meadow grass so tall she had to shove it aside with her arms, which felt like swimming. It had been after a dark Sunday service her father read at home, a gloom that still made her shiver to recall.

"Sometimes," Edna said softly, "I feel like I'm in that meadow again—wandering with no plan and no guide." Adèle squeezed her hand and murmured kindly in French. The touch confused Edna at first, but she accepted it. No one in her family had hugged often; she had chosen friends who were private like herself. Slowly, she let such kindnesses happen.

Edna told Adèle a little about the men she had once admired from far away without anyone ever knowing. As a child she had adored a sad-eyed cavalry officer who visited her father. As a girl she admired a young man engaged to a neighbor. Later she decided she was in love with a famous actor whose portrait she kept on her desk and sometimes kissed when no one saw.

None of those dreams came true, and then she had married Léonce. It had not been a grand, fated love; it had felt more like an accident that everyone else decided to call destiny. He was kind and devoted, and her father and sister had been angry that he was Catholic.

The marriage felt solid and safe. She closed the door on the romantic realm she had haunted in her young mind.

She grew fond of her husband, pleased that it was a steady warmth instead of a great blaze. She loved her children in quick bursts—sometimes hugging them as if she could never let go, sometimes forgetting them for a while without meaning to. When they had been away with their grandmother the summer before, she had been relieved, and this made her uncomfortable to admit, even to herself.

They didn't say all this on the beach in plain words. But Edna felt brave and free just letting some truth escape. Robert appeared with a troop of children, and the quiet time ended. As he walked Adèle home, she asked him to do her a favor. "Leave Mrs. Pontellier alone," she said gently. "She is not one of us; she may not understand our way of teasing and playing." Robert's face grew red. He argued, then joked to hide it, and soon they were laughing about old stories. Still, a tiny seed of warning had fallen between them.

Saturday night, the whole place shone with lamps and cut branches of lemon and orange trees twined into the white curtains. The Farival twins banged out a duet. After the dancing, Robert came to Edna on the porch: would she like to hear Mademoiselle Reisz play? The little, sharp-faced pianist disliked many people, but she liked to play when she felt like it.

Robert fetched her. Mademoiselle Reisz sat at the piano with her plain clothes and tight hair and asked Edna what to play. Edna told her to choose.

Usually music painted pictures for Edna—a man on a rock, a woman in a long gown, children running. But tonight, when the first chords rang out, something else happened.

The music did not sketch pictures. Instead it stirred up strong feelings as real and wide as the sea. Edna's body trembled; tears filled her eyes. She could not speak to Mademoiselle after the piece. On the way out, the musician patted her shoulder and said, "You are the only one worth playing for."

Someone suggested a midnight swim. The moon poured silver over the sand and water. All summer people had tried to teach Edna to swim, but she always feared the moment when the bottom fell away. This night, without anyone's hand, she suddenly could. She laughed out loud and floated and struck out. Daring filled her chest. She wanted to swim far beyond where any woman had swum. She went further and further until, turning back, she saw the shore as a dark thin line and felt a blade of fear cut through her. Death flashed before her eyes. She fought the fear, turned, and made it back, breathless, feeling both shaken and alive.

Her husband showed up and told her she had never been very far out. She ignored the teasing. She didn't want to go back inside, not even when he called. The old habit would have made her obey before. But now a steady fire burned inside. "Léonce, go to bed," she said. "I mean to stay here." He sat and smoked and sipped wine and waited. She swung gently in the hammock and felt as if she had been asleep for a long time and was only now waking. When dawn bleached the sky, she rose with aching limbs and went in at last.

Very early, on a sudden impulse, she sent the servant girl to wake Robert. Tell him the boat is ready. Tell him to hurry. Edna had never sent for him before. He came with his kind face flushed and made coffee at the kitchen window. They set out with the other islanders for the Chênière Caminada, the lovers still whispering, the lady in black counting her beads, and a barefoot Spanish girl named Mariequita standing on the wharf. On the water, Edna felt a chain loosen from her heart, as if she had drifted free overnight and now the wind and waves could take her where they pleased.

At the island church, the air grew hot, and the candles swayed. Edna felt dizzy and left. Robert took her to a little cottage owned by Madame Antoine. The room was tidy and cool. Edna loosened her clothes and stretched in the high white bed.

She noticed her arms and the firm skin as if for the first time. She powdered her nose from a little box and dozed off. When she woke, the sun leaned low. Robert was outside leaning against a turned-over boat, reading.

She came out fresh and hungry, breaking bread and drinking wine that he had found.

She plucked an orange and tossed it at him. "How many years have I slept?" she asked, laughing. "A hundred," he said. It felt true.

They waited in the coppery sunset under the orange trees, and Madame Antoine told stories as the night thickened with sound and gold whispers about pirates and hidden coins. On the way back, the water shimmered with ghost boats and moonlight and something inside Edna glowed brighter.

Soon after, during dinner at the pension, two or three people spoke at once: Robert was leaving for Mexico that very night. Edna dropped her spoon. He had read to her all morning and said nothing. Across the table he looked uneasy and pretended he'd always meant to go someday. Everyone talked at once. Madam Lebrun tried to make peace between her silly Victor and others who teased, but her voice broke, and she scolded. Robert finally said he had to catch a particular steamer if he meant to meet his friend in Vera Cruz. He had decided only at four that afternoon. Edna forced soup down. She felt punched in the chest.

She did not join the others later. She sat in a thin wrapper on the porch, fanning herself and refusing to dress again even when Adèle urged her. "I hate shocks and surprises," she said tightly. "To rush off like a storybook hero! He said nothing when he was with me this morning."

When Robert finally came with his bag to say goodbye, he sat on a child's stool and fidgeted with his hat, complaining of the heat though he refused her fan. She asked how long he'd be gone; he said he didn't know, maybe forever. He dodged her questions and asked her not to be angry with him. "I have grown used to seeing you every day," she said.

"I thought I should see you in the winter in the city."

"So did I," he blurted, then stood and held out his hand. "Good-by, my dear Mrs. Pontellier. You won't quite forget me?" She clung to his hand and begged him to write when he arrived.

"I will. Good-by," he said. Then he was gone, already walking with Beaudelet. Edna pressed her handkerchief to her mouth and tasted cloth and salt. Only then did she realize how much she had let him in. The summer sky and the sea no longer felt blue or silver to her. Everything had faded.

After that, she searched for him wherever she could—not Robert himself, but anything that still held a little of him. She sat in Madame Lebrun's room and braved the whirring sewing machine so she could find an old family album in the corner. She turned its stiff pages, peering at a round-faced baby with a fist in his mouth sitting in his mother's lap.

Those baby eyes looked like Robert's. Then there was a small boy in a cap at five. She held each picture in her hands and tried to read in his changing face what she wanted to know. Without him about, her life felt like a dress whose colors had all been washed out.

Back in New Orleans, everything that had always felt normal stopped feeling right. On Tuesdays, she had always been at home to receive visitors. One Tuesday, when her husband asked how it went, she said calmly she had been out. "Out, on Tuesday?" He was astonished.

She told him she had felt like going out. He lectured gently about how people ought to behave, and how such small things matter. He frowned at the soup and the fish and got angrier about the cook than he meant to. He left to dine at his club. Years earlier, these scenes had made her ill with sadness.

This time, when he left, she finished her dinner deliberately. Then in her room she tore a handkerchief to shreds. She pulled off her wedding ring and dropped it on the carpet and tried to crush it with her heel, but the ring refused to show a mark. She snatched a glass vase and smashed it on the hearth. The crash felt satisfying. A servant came, and Edna, calm again, told her to leave the bits till morning. The maid picked up the ring and brought it to her. Edna slid it back on her finger without comment.

She began quietly doing as she pleased. She stopped receiving callers on Tuesdays. She forgot to return visits. She spent long hours trying to paint, though it often frustrated her. She used her boys as models until they refused, and then she coaxed the washerwoman and the small housemaid to sit for her.

While working, sometimes she hummed the little song Robert had sung on the boat, "Ah!

si tu savais," and it sent a warm wind through her memory—the gleam of moon on water, the harsh breath of the hot south wind. Often she was lifted and merry for no clear reason, as if her skin had grown transparent to the sun. Other days, everything looked like a tangled struggle of tired people pushing toward nothing at all, and she could not work at all.

She went searching for Mademoiselle Reisz but at first couldn't find her. Finally, after taking a hint from Madame Lebrun—and while Victor, Madame's wild younger son, chattered and bragged—Edna climbed many stairs to a little room under the roof. Smoke and light streamed in the windows, and a grand piano filled the floor. Mademoiselle Reisz sat mending an old shoe, hair prickling with short pins; she laughed all over, face and shoulders, in her strange way.

"I have a letter from your friend," she said, pouring coffee. "Robert wrote to me." Edna stared. "To you?" "To me," the woman repeated.

"But his pen only writes your name. He asks how you are, he asks me to play your favorite piece, he asks if you ever come up here."

Edna asked to see the letter, but Mademoiselle shook her head and asked first what Edna was doing with herself. "Painting," Edna said. "I am becoming an artist."

The older woman nodded slowly. "To be an artist one must have gifts and, more than that, a courageous soul that dares and defies." She finally let Edna read the crumpled letter while the piano swelled with Chopin's Impromptu, full of longing. Edna wept softly, the music cutting straight through her ribs like a blade of sweetness and pain.

Her husband went to Doctor Mandelet, an old friend, and asked what ailed Edna. The Doctor, with kind eyebrows and quiet wisdom, told him to let her alone a while. "Women are delicate in ways not always seen," he said. "Don't push; it will pass." Edna's father, a stern old Colonel from Kentucky, visited next.

He loved good stories and neat clothes and told Edna what to wear to a music party, which she and he attended together.

The evening was lively—and later, over dinner, the Doctor saw something new in Edna: a softness and a glow as if she had been sleeping in the sun. On his walk home, he muttered to himself, worried and wondering whom she had let into her life.

A few days later she and her father quarreled because Edna refused to go to her younger sister's wedding. The Colonel, who believed in command and duty, swore and called her unkind, while Mr. Pontellier kept away from the fight because the Doctor had advised him not to cross her. Soon after, Léonce left for New York for business, and the children went to Iberville with their grandmother.

Edna cried and hugged her husband when he left, calling him her good friend. And after they were gone, a white, peaceful feeling settled on her.

She walked through the rooms like a stranger making a home. She tidied, talked to the little dog, cut dead leaves in the garden, and told the cook they would eat much less. That night she ate a perfect little dinner in a soft robe, fed the dog scraps, thought fondly of her boys, drank a glass of wine, and read until she felt warm and heavy with sleep under the eiderdown.

Sunlight days filled her with skill. Rainy days left her restless. She met Mrs. Highcamp and a charming man, Alcée Arobin, at the races. The thunder of hooves delighted her; she played tips and won, color rising to her face.

Arobin watched her with a smiling eye. Soon he called for her in his trap and drove her to the track again and again. He had a quiet voice and ways that invited confidences. One evening as they sat by her fire after dinner, he rolled up his sleeve to show a faint red mark he said came from a sword in a duel years ago.

Edna took his wrist in her hand without thinking and then snatched her fingers back, saying the sight of wounds made her ill. He followed her to the mantel, his eyes warm and cautious. He lifted her hand. She drew back, saying in a tense little voice, "I don't like you." The words had no weight even to her.

He apologized and went away when she asked. Alone, she looked at the place on her hand where he had pressed his lips, and then she put out the candle and lay down, and slept so deeply it was as if the warmth he left were a drug.

Arobin sent her an extravagant letter of apology, and after some annoyance she answered playfully. He came back, always courteous, ready to fit himself to her moods. He never pressed hard afterward; he waited. It became simple for her to be close with him. He woke a part of her that had nothing to do with love, a part that burned at a touch and drifted in a sigh, and still—he was not Robert.

On a cold, gray day she climbed up again to Mademoiselle Reisz's little aerie, dripping from the mist. She brought the older woman brandy for her cold. Suddenly she let out the plan she had kept quiet inside: "I am going to move out of the big house," she said. "Only around the corner, to a small four-room place. I am tired of too many servants and rooms. I want to feel free and independent." Mademoiselle did not look surprised. Edna added in a whisper, as if confessing something to herself, that she never again wanted to belong to anyone but herself. She would give a grand dinner before leaving the old place.

Mademoiselle took a letter from under a dusty bust of Beethoven, another from Robert. "So soon?" Edna cried. He wrote that he would be returning soon. "Why did you not tell me?"

she burst out. "He did not say why," the woman answered. "You know he is trying to forget you—because you are not free." Then Mademoiselle fixed her little black eyes on Edna and asked very simply, "Are you in love with Robert?"

"Yes," Edna said, and felt relief in saying it at last.

The old woman asked why. Edna laughed softly and dropped to the floor, hiding her face in Mademoiselle's lap, and described silly little things—his hair that grew back from his temples, the way he opened and shut his eyes, the small finger he couldn't straighten from baseball. It was no answer and every answer.

That night, when Arobin leaned near her, Edna thought of Mademoiselle's words: "The bird that would fly above the plain of tradition must have strong wings; weaklings fall bruised." She told him the saying and then, without stopping to measure right or wrong, leaned forward and kissed him back when he kissed her. It was the first time in her life she felt her nature answer a kiss with full fire. Later, alone in bed, she cried a little, not from shame but because she understood—this was not the kiss she had longed for.

She emptied the big house of what belonged only to her—paintings, a few chairs, her books, small lamps—and moved into the little "pigeon house" behind a gate and a tangle of garden. She sent her husband a bright, friendly letter about her plan and the farewell dinner she would give. He wrote back disapprovingly and then cleverly announced in the paper that their house would be remodeled and that the family planned to go abroad. Workmen swarmed, furniture vanished, and the neighbors were soothed. Edna smiled at Léonce's skill and let it be. She had descended in society by moving to a tiny place, yet she felt she had climbed up inside herself.

The farewell dinner was glowing and small, with ten guests around a table laid in pale yellow satin and flowers and candles. Edna wore her new diamonds in her hair and said it was her twenty-ninth birthday. Conversation flowed. Victor reclined in his chair with a garland on his black curls, his cheeks flushed like crushed grapes, while Mrs. Highcamp admired him.

Miss Mayblunt, who wrote, cried that she wished she could paint with colors as well as with words. Through it all, Edna felt the old unease drift back like a cold breath.

She missed something that wasn't in the room: a certain voice in her ear, a certain glance that made unknown doors swing open in her. Then Victor began to sing, "Ah! si tu savais," Robert's little song.

Glass shattered in Edna's hand as she slapped down her cup; wine ran over the tablecloth. "Stop," she said, walking behind Victor and pressing her palm over his mouth. He kissed her palm and promised not to sing it. After the last guests left, the night quieted, and Edna, tired and full of a strange sadness, let Arobin help close the house.

He walked with her through the dark to the pigeon house and sat beside her in the lamplight, smoothing her hair with a hand that knew what it was doing. She did not resist him when his lips touched her shoulder; she let herself melt into the comfort of a body that wanted her.

The pigeon house bloomed with flowers the next morning—a surprise Arobin had arranged—but Edna preferred not to owe him even that. To her pleasure, the little place took on her own scent and shape quickly. She felt the difference between living in someone else's big house and standing inside a space she had chosen, where every chair and cup was hers.

She went to Iberville for a week to see her boys. They flung themselves at her and chattered about fishing, riding the mule to the mill, and picking pecans.

She followed them around the fields and watched workers among cane and cows. She filled herself with the high, simple life of children, and it filled her back. She wept when she left them—and then somewhere on the road the song of their voices faded inside her, and the city took her back into its slow rhythm.

One afternoon she went to Mademoiselle Reisz's and found the door locked. She knew where the key was hidden and let herself in to wait. She sat at the window and flicked brown leaves from a pot of geraniums. A knock came. "Come in," she called.

Robert stepped into the room. Edna's breath stopped. "Why, Robert!" she cried. He had returned "the day before yesterday," he said, and produced a loud wrong chord on the piano without meaning to.

The words struck Edna harder than the sound. He had been in the same city for two days and had not come to her.

The old woman had said he loved her; why then had he not run to the pigeon house at once? When she asked if he had meant to come, he muttered about business, about returning to the old company.

He said the Mexicans were not for him. He did not say that he had thought of doing the proper thing by hiding, or that he was afraid of the fire that might catch them both. Edna pulled on her gloves and hat with slow, careful motions and asked if he would wait for Mademoiselle; he did not.

They walked through damp streets together and passed her old big house, now half-torn, and she said, "I am glad you did not know it." He hesitated when she invited him to dine. She looked hurt without speaking. He threw his hat on her chair and stayed. Celestine, her servant, set another place.

They talked, at first awkwardly, about Mexico and Grand Isle, almost mirroring each other's sentences as if daring the other to admit the truth. He pulled out a bright embroidered tobacco pouch. "You used to carry a rubber one," she said.

"This was a gift," he replied shortly. "From a girl in Vera Cruz?"

she asked lightly. He said yes but that the girl was ordinary. The pouch went quickly back into his pocket. In the room, among her sketches, lay a photograph of Arobin she had used to study a head shape. Robert's eyes settled on it and did not move. "What is his picture doing here?" he asked. "He is a friend," she said, and turned the talk to something else.

A little later, Arobin himself arrived to say the card game was postponed. He and Robert greeted each other coolly. When Robert stood to go, Edna held out her hand and said in a voice she had kept back for many months, "Good night. I adore you. Sleep well." He lifted her hand and kissed it, a gentle, proper kiss that was somehow more respectful than a wild embrace and somehow more painful. He left, and she stood still feeling the warmth where his lips had just been.

In the next days she expected him to come, and when he did not, she woke each morning whispering, "Today," and fell asleep each night feeling foolish. She did not go to Mademoiselle's; she avoided Madame Lebrun's house; she did not search for him openly. When Arobin asked, she rode with him quickly along the Shell Road, the horses' hooves drumming like a heartbeat. They ate simple suppers in her little dining room. She fell asleep those nights without hope or despair, simply drowsy and used to company.

One afternoon she slipped into a hidden garden off a high-board fence where an old mulatresse sold fried chicken and milk and an old cat slept on a step. Edna ordered a small dinner and stroked the cat. Robert came in through the gate. He seemed surprised, as if fate had decided for him how to meet her: by accident and not by intention. He sat and shared her food.

When she asked why he had kept away, he tried to laugh it off. "Don't force me into making a cut that only hurts," he said, "for nothing can come of it."

She let the subject slide and, in the slow heat, they spoke of the cat and the taste of the chicken and the end of the novel she was reading. He offered to tell her the ending so she could be spared disappointment.

When dusk fell, they walked back to the pigeon house. He helped light a lamp. Edna went to her room to bathe her face and came back to find him leaning with his head against the chair back as if lost. She bent and said his name softly.

He looked up.

She kissed him—a cool, quick kiss—and then stepped away shyly. He was at her side in a heartbeat, taking her in his arms, holding her like a ship's rope that keeps you from being swept away. The kiss he gave her woke in him all the longing he had hidden since Grand Isle. "Now you know," he whispered. "Now you know what I have been fighting."

She asked why it had been a fight. "Because you are not free. You are his wife," he said, miserably. She cupped his face in her hands and touched his brow and lips with tender kisses.

"I am no longer one of Mr.

Pontellier's possessions," she said. "I give myself where I choose." He shut his eyes, dizzy with joy and fear. He had even, in his foolishness, dreamed of some miracle like other men making their wives free. But when he opened his eyes he saw the warning carved at the bottom of that dream.

There was a knock. Celestine came to say Madame Ratignolle had sent a message. Adèle was taken sick; please would Mrs. Pontellier come at once. "I will go," Edna said to Robert. "Wait for me. No matter how late—wait." He begged her to stay, but she pressed his cheek a last time and hurried out.

At the drug store below Adèle's apartment, her husband himself was mixing a potion. He thanked Edna for coming. Upstairs, Adèle was pale and drawn, the golden coil of her hair loose on her pillow. Between her pangs she chatted and complained, and then the doctor came in and the women all moved about in a low dance of care.

Edna felt a hot revolt rise in her against the old, heavy law of nature that forced this suffering.

Her own memories were a blur of chloroform and waking to find a warm little life next to her. This was different. Her friend clutched her hand and would not let her go. When it was over and Adèle lay small and spent, Edna leaned down to kiss her. In a faint whisper, Adèle said, "Think of the children, Edna. Oh, think of the children." The words slid under Edna's ribs and pressed there.

It was night. Doctor Mandelet offered to walk her partway home. Stars trembled overhead and a mild breath moved down the street. He told her she should not have been there; he knew it would be cruel to her. She answered vaguely that one must think of children sometimes, the sooner the better.

He asked if she was going abroad with her husband. "No. I want to be let alone," she said.

"No one has any right—except children, perhaps—and even then—" She stopped. The Doctor looked at her sideways with a deep sadness in his eyes and said softly that youth is lured by illusions so that the world may continue, and nature does not count the costs. He told her that if ever she wished to speak to him, he would understand.

Edna walked back to the pigeon house with beating heart. Calm fell on her as she thought again and again of Robert's arms and voice. She pictured him waiting in her parlor, eyes closed, dozing—the way she wished to bend over him and wake him only with her lips. She opened the door. The room was empty. A little piece of paper lay by the lamp. On it was written: "I love you. Good-by—because I love you." She sat down. She did not cry out or weep. The lamp flickered and went out. She stayed there in the soft dark until morning.

A dry, bright day came, and with it a decision that arrived so quietly it felt like something remembered, not made. Edna took Beaudelet's boat back to Grand Isle. Victor was repairing a gallery; Mariequita sat near passing nails, fantasizing aloud about lovers and jealous girls and listening to stories of the famous dinner at Edna's. They gaped when Edna walked up neat and tired and asked for a place to rest for the afternoon and for towels. She said she might "wash and even take a little swim" before supper. They protested the water would be cold. She smiled and asked for the towels anyway.

The beach lay empty and white. The sea shimmered like hammered metal in the sun. A bird with a broken wing beat and tumbled down to the waves. In the bath-house, Edna found her old bathing suit and put it on; then just as quickly, the prickling cloth felt like nettles. She took it off and walked naked under the sky for the first time in her life.

The air touched her like a soft hand. She felt like a baby opening its eyes on a world it already knew. Little waves slid to her feet like playful snakes. She walked into the water.

It shocked her at first and then held her, and she lifted her body into it and began to swim.

She went on and on. She remembered the night she had swum far and feared death and turned back. Today she did not turn back to look. She thought of the child in the meadow of grass, of the long line of her father's porch, of the ring of spurs from the cavalry officer, and the smell of pinks and the deep hum of bees. She remembered her boys—how they were hers and she theirs and how they would always tug at her in ways she could no longer answer without losing herself again.

She did not hate them; she simply could not give them her self. Mademoiselle had said wings must be strong or the bird will fall bruised. Edna's arms grew heavy. She heard somewhere far away, like a shell held to the ear, Robert's voice saying goodbye. Perhaps the Doctor would have understood. Perhaps no one could. The shore thinned and melted. The fear that had once stabbed her rose sharply and then faded. The sea closed around her in its soft embrace, whispering the same endless song.

Beyond the city and the Gulf, in another place and time, a woman people called La Folle lived alone in a cabin by a bayou that curved like a silver bow. As a girl she had seen a man stumble into her mother's hut with blood and gunpowder on him, and something in her mind had broken. She drew an invisible line at the bayou and never crossed beyond. Folks grew used to seeing her, strong as a man, working her patch of corn and tobacco.

She loved her neighbor's little boy, Chéri, as if he were her own. He would rest his head on her knee and feel safe there.

One hot day, he crossed the bayou, full of brag, with a little gun. Later, La Folle heard the gun's crack and a cry and found him on the ground, sobbing that he was dead. A ball had lodged in his leg.

She lifted him in her strong arms and walked to the bayou, calling for help. No answer came. She shut her eyes and ran down the bank, through the shallow water, and up again, past her fear. People came to their doors, shocked to see her on their side of the water. She walked to the big house and laid the boy in his father's arms, and then collapsed.

In the night she woke in her own bed. At dawn she put on a clean blue dress and crossed the bayou now without fear. She walked slowly through the quiet quarter, breathing in the scent of flowers like a person who has entered a bright new world. She sat on the grand steps and asked, modestly, how the child did. "He sleeps," they said. She was content. The world beyond the bayou was no longer a hideous red thing but a place where she could sit and watch the sun rise.

Along a country stretch called Côte Joyeuse long after the war, two sisters lived in a small cabin near the vine-covered ruins of a red-brick mansion shaped like the Pantheon. Their father had built it with pride and much money, and soldiers' boots had crashed and shouted in its halls, smashing crystal and then leaving it to burn. The older sister, Ma'ame Pélagie, had spent thirty years saving coins and planning how to rebuild her home—maybe wooden columns instead of marble, maybe no crystal chandeliers—but always, one day.

Pauline, younger and gentle, clung to her.

Their brother, Léandre, sent his motherless daughter, La Petite, to stay with them. She arrived with bright eyes and the breath of the wider world on her. At first she tried to fit herself to the narrow life between the cabin and the ruined pillars. She helped Pauline with work and walked with her under moss, arm in arm.

But later she grew quiet, her cheeks pale. She told them she loved them both but could not live on so little. She needed books and music and company. When Pauline heard that La Petite planned to go away, she broke and cried as if something inside would be torn.

Holding her all night, Ma'ame Pélagie decided.

"La Petite will not go," she promised, though not to La Petite. She went out into the moonlight and pressed her cheek against the cold pillars and said farewell to the long dream of the old house glowing with candles and guests. A year later, a neat wooden house rose where the ruin cleared, laughter sounded on the gallery, and young people danced while La Petite played the piano. On the porch, Pauline stood full and pink-cheeked, young again.

Ma'ame Pélagie stood at the rail in a black dress with a white kerchief, her silver hair like a crown.

Her eyes held a quiet light that would not flare, and if you listened closely you could still hear, under the young voices, the hush of an old dream settling deeper into its own shadow—for she had chosen her sister's bright life over her own long-held wish and was at peace with the cost.

In a different Louisiana parish, Madame Valmondé drove to visit her daughter Désirée and the new baby at L'Abri. Years ago, she had found Désirée as a toddler asleep at the base of a stone pillar and taken her in as a gift from heaven. No one knew the child's blood. Désirée grew into a sweet, beautiful girl, and Armand Aubigny, master of L'Abri, had fallen in love with a thunderclap of feeling when he saw her again at that same pillar.

After their marriage, when Madame Valmondé came to see the child months later, she bent over the baby and then looked again, hard.

"This is not the baby," she exclaimed, meaning only that he had changed greatly. But she also looked closely at the nurse's face and began to worry. Désirée was happy at first—Armand had been kind as never before, gentle with the house servants, proud of his child.

Then a heavy worry fell in the house. Armand avoided her eyes. The servants whispered. One hot afternoon, as Désirée stroked her hair and watched her baby sleep and a small boy from the quarter waved a fan by the bed, she looked from the boy to her child and then back. Her breath froze.

Armand came in, and she clutched his arm.

"Look at our child. What does it mean?" He shook her off and spoke like a man cutting down a tree. "It means the child is not white.

It means you are not white." Désirée begged and denied. She wrote to her mother begging the truth. Madame Valmondé wrote back at once: "Come home with your child." Désirée showed Armand the letter and asked if she should go.

He said yes and watched her walk slowly out under the live oaks in her thin white dress, away from the safe road, through the stubble field to the dark bayou. She did not return. Later, Armand ordered all that had been hers burned: gowns and bonnets, the baby's cradle and lace.

As he went through a drawer, a scrap of an old letter from his mother fell into his hand.

She thanked God that his father had arranged their lives so their son might never know that his mother "belonged to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery." Armand sat with the paper in his hand, and his face did not change, but inside him the house he had thought so solid must have shaken to its pillars.

On a quiet sugar plantation, Mrs. Baroda grew annoyed that her husband invited his friend Gouvernail to stay for a while. She had planned sleepy mornings and long talks with Gaston. She expected a brisk, thin, clever man with eyeglasses and instead found a quiet, gentle person who smoked on the portico and liked listening to Gaston's stories and to the dogs. He puzzled her because he seemed to make no effort to please and yet he was not unfriendly.

She tried leaving him to the men and then, annoyed with herself for caring, tried going on walks with him and coaxing him to talk.

One soft night she sat under a live-oak, thinking confused thoughts, and he came with a message and sat near, speaking a few lines half to himself about the warm southern night. Then he talked about old college days and ambitions worn down now to a simple wish to live.

She could not focus on his words. She wanted to touch his sleeve, to lean close and whisper—things she could have done if she were not a respectable woman. She stood up instead, and went away without speaking.

The next morning she left for the city until he was gone. Later, when her husband wanted to invite him again, she strongly refused.

But before a year passed, she surprised Gaston by saying they should invite Gouvernail again—and when Gaston said he was glad she had gotten over her dislike, she kissed him sweetly and said, "I have overcome everything." What she meant, only she knew.

In a golden-lit parlor in town, Brantain sat in a shadow watching Nathalie pet a purring cat. He was rich and awkward, and he adored her. She planned to accept him—he could give her the crowds and brightness she wanted. The door suddenly opened and a young man named Harvy, an old friend, walked in and, before she could think, kissed her on the lips.

Brantain rose stiffly. Nathalie, quicker, reached the door, stopped him, and begged him not to misunderstand. Harvy later told her he had come through a side door with her brother.

She made sure Brantain heard that explanation on another day, alone in a corner, her voice low and soft. He believed her, and soon she wore his ring.

At the wedding, Harvy found her and said with a crooked smile that he had been sent by the groom to kiss the bride. He did not, he said; he had quit kissing women—it was too dangerous. "Well," he added, "you have Brantain and his million left. You can't have everything." Nathalie smiled like a woman who has gotten exactly what she came for.

One busy day in the city, Mrs. Sommers, a small tired woman who always counted the pennies for her children's clothes and meals, found herself with fifteen unexpected dollars. She meant to spend them wisely: shoes for little Janie, percale for the boys' shirts, caps for the older children. The list made her happy as she walked through a department store. But she had not eaten lunch and felt weak.

She sank onto a revolving stool and found her fingers stroking a pile of silk stockings on sale. They were smooth and shining and soft against her hand. Heat rose to her cheeks, and she bought a pair.

In the ladies' room she pulled off her old cotton stockings and drew the new ones on. They felt delicious against her skin.

She went to the shoe department and asked for something stylish and well-made; her ankle looked pretty in it. She let a young woman ease a long kid glove up over her hand and on beyond her wrist, and bought another pair to match. She bought two fine magazines. Then she walked into a restaurant she had never dared to enter and ordered oysters, a chop, a little salad, a frozen cream, a glass of wine, and coffee.

She cut the pages of the magazine and wiggled her toes in the silk and did not care about the price.

When she left, the waiter bowed to her like she was a princess. Later, she went to a matinee. She laughed and cried with the woman in the next chair, whose hat was too bright. When it was over and she waited for the cable car, a man across from her studied her pale, pretty face and did not know that her deepest wish was for the ride to never end—for the bright, floating feeling to go on and on.

One autumn night during the war, soldiers sitting around a fire on a hillside teased Edmond about the locket around his neck, a locket that held miniatures of a girl's parents and their wedding date. Octavie had given him that precious thing when he left, unclasping it from her own white dress and fastening it about his throat. After the long day's march, Edmond lay under the cold stars and dreamed.

Hours later, the hills suddenly clattered with orders and smoke. The dawn grew from gray to pink and then blood, and by nightfall silence lay again. An old priest moved slowly across a battlefield with a servant, looking for any who still breathed.

There were none—only still faces gazing up. The priest bent over one man whose hands had clawed at the grass.

Around the soldier's neck, the priest found a chain and a locket with faces inside it. He took it and wept as the angelus sounded from a far bell. Sometime after, in a soft spring that felt like a blessing, Octavie rode with Judge Pillier in an old carriage under blooming green. She wore a plain black dress and felt the locket lie against her heart. She had read a letter many times that said the locket had been removed from a dead soldier.

She would be like a certain aunt now: quiet, dignified, always sad.

The judge, who loved her, asked her to lift her veil, and then, with a trembling voice, asked if she did not think miracles might happen on such a warm morning. She looked at him with sudden, glowing fear. Birds sang. They turned up the familiar drive, and voices came from the gallery, and then Edmond stood in front of her, alive, laughing and weeping, and she fell into his arms. Later, when she asked him about the locket, he said carelessly that it had been stolen in a fight. He did not talk about the other man who had been in his company that day.

And finally, a thought comes like a slow leaf. Some people race with life and are carried forward by it, brighter than the water in sun. They don't need to understand the whole plan; they feel its rush and keep step. Others are left by the roadside, with the wind in the grass and the clouds lying calmly overhead. The great procession hurries past, a thousand colors and songs, so beautiful and yet crushing the weak underfoot.

It can feel like a perfect orchestra tuning itself toward heaven. But if you cannot feel its rhythm because the feet pound too hard and the voices shout too loud, then it is kinder to stand aside and be still. Rest here with the grass and the small creatures, with a hand on a warm stone. The road will keep on. We will close our eyes a little while and listen for the quieter song.