ish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul's summer day." (8)When Edna goes to mass with her friend, Robert Lebrun, we see another instance where she's not herself: "A feeling of oppression and drowsiness overcame Edna during the service. Her head began to ache, and the lights on the altar swayed before her eyes. Another time she might have made an effort to regain her composure; but her one thought was to quit the stifling atmosphere of the church and reach the open air." (34) For the rest of the day she lingers at Madame Antoine's, with no mind of what her husband thinks. He didn't know that she was going in the first place. She seems not to worry about what others think of her, except Robert. When Edna returns home later that day, she finds out that Robert is leaving for Mexico. She is rather upset with this news and afterwards leaves to go home. "She went directly to her room. The little cottage was close and stuffy after leaving the outer air. But she did not mind; there appeared to be a hundred different things demanding her attention indoors." (42) She tries to ignore that his leaving and not telling her affects her so much. Yet she declines an invitation from Madame Lebrun to go and sit with them until Robert leaves. When Edna sees him leave it tears her up inside that her companion, the one person that she felt understood her, is leaving: "Edna bit her handkerchief convulsively, striving to hold back and to hide, even from herself as she would have hidden from another, the emotion which was troubling - tearing- her. Her eyes were brimming with tears." (44) Edna's life is not complete when Robert leaves: Robert's going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems no longer worth wearing. She sought him everywhere- in others whom she induced to talk about ...
