CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Madame Ratignolle informed Edna that her younger son, Etienne, had been very bad while she was away. When the time had come for him to go to bed, he refused and started to yell very loudly. At that point, Madame Ratignolle tried to calm him down as best she could. She had had no problems with the other boy, Raoul. He had gone to bed two hours ago.

Etienne was dressed in his sleeping clothes, which were too long for him and caused him to almost fall several times as Edna walked him to his bedroom. His eyes were red and swollen from crying so long. In his room, his mother picked him up and held him in her arms as she sat in a chair. She sang a few simple songs to him until he fell asleep. Then she put him to bed.

It was just after nine o'clock and still rather early for the adults. Edna sat with Madame Ratignolle and chatted for a short while.

"Leonce was quite worried," Madame Ratignolle explained, "He was ready to take a boat to the island to get you, but Mr Farival explained to him that you were simply very tired and needed to rest for a while. Finally, hearing that Tonie was to bring you back to Grand Isle, your husband calmed down and decided to wait here for you. He's gone over to the club to meet a gentleman about some business. I don't remember exactly what it was about. Anyway, I can't stay here with you now, because my husband is waiting for me at home and he just hates it when I'm not there with him."

After Adèle had left, Robert, who had been there the whole time, went with Edna to pull the mosquito net over Etienne.

"Do you realize that we've been hanging out together since very early this morning?" Edna commented.

"Well, we can't really count the time when you were sleeping, can we?" answered Robert. He then took her hand for a moment, squeezed it in order to say goodbye, and then walked alone towards the sea.

Edna was not at all tired. She decided to wait up for her husband. Despite hearing the sounds of people having a good time over at Madame Lebrun's, she did not join them. She wanted to be alone for a while. She sat on the front porch thinking about this year's summer holiday and how it compared to other summers. In the end, she decided that it was something about herself that was different. Something had changed inside of her. She thought it strange that Robert had gone to the sea by himself. She would not have minded if he had stayed a little longer with her. Soon she was softly singing to herself a little song that Robert had been singing as they were returning from Madame Antoine's. She thought his voice was quite nice and could not stop hearing it in her head.

(end of section)