Chapter 9 — Mademoiselle Reisz plays

A Saturday night a few weeks after Adèle's warning to Robert. An unusual number of husbands have come down for the weekend. Lamps blaze along the walls of the hall; orange and lemon branches form garlands between them. The Farival twins, dressed in the Virgin's blue and white, play their piano duets from Zampa and the Poet and the Peasant overture — pieces the parrot has heard too many times. "Allez vous-en! Sapristi!" Old Monsieur Farival is indignant; Victor refuses to remove the bird; his decrees are immutable.

A small girl in black tulle dances on the floor. Madame Ratignolle plays accompaniment for waltzes. Almost everyone dances. Ice cream and gold-and-silver cake are passed. Edna dances once with Léonce, once with Robert, once with Monsieur Ratignolle, then goes out onto the gallery to sit on the low window sill and watch the moon come up over the restless water. Robert joins her and offers to ask Mademoiselle Reisz to play. Edna says it would be useless. Robert insists.

He brings Reisz in. She is small, plain, "a collection of rusty black lace with a bunch of artificial violets pinned to the side of her hair," eyes that burn. She asks what Mrs. Pontellier wants to hear. Edna is too embarrassed to choose. The first chords send a keen tremor down her spine. "Perhaps it was the first time she was ready; perhaps the first time her being was open to receive an impression of lasting truth." She waits for the mental pictures music usually gives her. They do not come. "But the passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the waves beat daily upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her." Reisz, finishing, pats her shoulder as she shuffles out: "You are the only one worth playing for. Those others? Bah!" The chapter ends with someone — perhaps Robert — proposing a swim under the mystic moon.