Chapter 14 — back to Grand Isle, Etienne, the last quiet evening

Etienne, the younger boy, has been very naughty, Madame Ratignolle says, as she delivers him into Edna's hands. He had refused to go to bed; she has taken charge of him and pacified him as well as she could. Raoul has been asleep two hours. The boy is in his long white nightgown, kept tripping by it as Adèle leads him by the hand. Edna takes him into her arms in the rocker and coddles him with tender names, soothing him to sleep. It is barely nine o'clock; no one has gone to bed but the children.

Léonce had been very uneasy when Edna failed to return that day, Adèle reports, and had wanted to set out at once for the Chêniere. Old Monsieur Farival assured him that his wife was only overcome with sleep and fatigue; he had been dissuaded. He had gone over to Klein's to look up some cotton broker about securities. He said he would not be late. Adèle herself is suffering from heat and oppression and would not stay with Edna; she carries her bottle of salts and large fan, and Monsieur Ratignolle dislikes being left alone above all things.

Robert, on the porch, plays the guitar and sings. The evening is gentle. Edna reflects on the day at the Chêniere — Madame Antoine's bed, the long sleep, the orange tree, the boat home in the moonlight — and feels she is "still under the spell of her infatuation." Tomorrow Robert will announce, at dinner, with no warning, that he is leaving for Mexico that very night. The chapter is the novel's last quiet domestic beat. Chopin lays it deliberately so the next chapter will land.