Edna's burst of solicitous attention toward Léonce as he leaves — "looking after his clothing, thinking about heavy underwear, quite as Madame Ratignolle would have done" — is an unconscious purging of the last vestiges of her old self. Her family's absence has granted her an incredible freedom that she has never known before and that she thoroughly relishes. Her new freedom brings new perspective and new choices. How appropriate that her reading choice that first night is the transcendental writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, who placed greater value on emotion and intuition than on reason or rationalism. That night she goes to bed with a greater sense of peace than she has ever experienced — one last great peace before her affair with Arobin begins.
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