Chapter 19 — painting; Léonce alarmed

Edna sets up an atelier in the bright upstairs room and begins to paint in earnest. It is no longer the dabbling of Grand Isle. She hires a model — first one of the Highcamp daughters, later a young Italian girl of striking color — and she works through the day. She sings under her breath while she works. She is, for the first time in her marriage, doing something that absorbs her in a way nothing in her household has absorbed her. The cook complains that Madame is no longer interested in the meals; the children's nurse complains that Madame is not arranging the schedule. Edna is briefly distracted, gives a vague answer, and returns to her canvas.

She no longer keeps her Tuesdays. She no longer keeps her social obligations more generally. She walks alone in the afternoon. She visits Mademoiselle Reisz. She comes home late. She is in the city physically and absent from the city's institutions of female time. Léonce, who has been counting on his wife's social labor as part of his business strategy, is bewildered. He cannot find any concrete fault — she is not having an affair, not, so far as he can tell, doing anything scandalous, simply not present in the role he has assigned her. He grows increasingly alarmed.

He consults Doctor Mandelet privately, asking obliquely whether Edna might be ill. The doctor is intuitive and old; he has been treating the family for years; he listens to Léonce's account, asks a few careful questions, and counsels patience. He suspects, without saying so, a romantic entanglement. He knows Edna will not respond to pressure. He tells Léonce to leave her alone for now and to invite him to dinner so he can observe her. Léonce agrees. The doctor's reading of Edna is the most accurate any character produces in the novel. The chapter ends with the doctor's careful diagnosis being to do nothing.