Chapter 35 — hope; Robert distant; Arobin again

The morning after the awkward dinner, Edna wakes early and full of hope. She is certain that Robert loves her. She has overinterpreted the strangeness of the dinner — it is, she tells herself, the strangeness of love that has been kept silent. She dresses with care. She arranges the small parlor. She works briefly at her painting and cannot concentrate. She waits for the knock. The morning passes. The afternoon passes. He does not come.

By evening her certainty has thinned. She thinks back over every detail of the dinner — the tobacco pouch, the half-finished sentences, the early departure — and the interpretation that had carried her through the morning frays. She sleeps badly. The next day she walks past the Lebrun house but cannot bring herself to call. She visits Reisz; Reisz has nothing new from Robert; the pianist watches her with eyes-that-burn and says little. Edna walks home through the cold streets in a state of suspended dread.

Arobin calls in the evening at his usual hour. He has been absent during the days of Robert's brief return out of decent calculation; with Edna's mood now visibly altered, he resumes. He is not threatened by Robert; he has read the dinner correctly. Edna receives him. She does not encourage him, exactly; she does not dismiss him either. The chapter is the slow turn from the hope of the morning to the more careful, exhausted clarity that she has, in some way, been wrong about what Robert intends.