This chapter reveals Robert's history as a sort of harmless womanizer. Although he seems to court a new woman each summer, his courtship is all form and no content. Chopin describes Creole husbands as passionless; Robert's supposed passion as a young single man similarly is without substance. Although he and Edna spend a great deal of time together, no one (not even Edna) is suspicious of their relationship or of Robert's intentions. When he lays his head on her arm while she is sketching, she "could not but believe it to be thoughtlessness on his part; yet that was no reason she should submit to it." So far, his devotion to Edna has not been framed in mock romance, for which she is grateful. "It would have been unacceptable and annoying" to her. At this point, Edna retains her allegiance to the morality of her culture.
At the same time, however, Edna has a susceptibility to sensuality that is inevitably linked to romance, to the soft touch of the warm breeze and the swim that Robert promises to be "delicious." At Robert's insistence that she go for a swim with him, Edna hears the Gulf's "sonorous murmur . . . like a loving but imperative entreaty" — echoing Robert's "murmured" words of spurned love earlier in the chapter. Robert is coming to represent sensuality and passion for her: He invites her to sensual experiences and uses sensual language.
Engaging with the sensuous world partly motivates her enjoyment of drawing, a hobby that gives her "satisfaction of a kind which no other employment afforded her," including motherhood. She can't resist sketching Madame Ratignolle because she appears in the light of sunset as a "sensuous Madonna" — the second reference to Madame Ratignolle as a Madonna in the chapter.
