Robert’s sudden departure reveals that he has begun falling in love with Edna. His overly formal goodbye; his blurted statement that he was looking forward to seeing her in New Orleans; and his sudden, secret resolve to leave attest to an emotional motivation for his trip.
His departure also provides a catalyst for Edna’s realization that she is once again infatuated with an unobtainable man. Yet her past experiences “offered no lesson which she was willing to heed.” Rather than recognizing that she is prone to falling in love with unattainable men now that she is the one who is unattainable, Edna focuses only on the loss of her current source of romance, the person who caters to her desire for imaginative and sensual living. Her conviction that “she had lost that which . . . her impassioned, newly awakened being demanded” arises in part from Robert’s contribution to the formation of that self with his tall tales of spirits and pirate gold and swimming lessons in the sultry Gulf waters.
Note that when Edna returns to her cottage after dinner that night, she is unsuccessful at helping her boys fall asleep, but instead riles them even further with an unfinished bed time story. Her unrest over Robert negatively affects her parenting.
