Madame Ratignolle continues the depiction of Edna as childish, telling her that "you seem to me like a child, Edna. You seem to act without a certain amount of reflection which is necessary in this life." Madame Ratignolle speaks of the circumspection adults are expected to engage in, such as the care Léonce wishes Edna to act with. Edna's entire personality has assumed the willfulness of a child since her return from Grand Isle: She wants it all 'her way' much like a toddler.
Madame Ratignolle also raises the issue of Edna's endangered reputation, saying "you know how evil-minded the world is — someone was talking of Alcée Arobin visiting you." Just as the Pontellier mansion in the midst of renovations "looked broken and half torn asunder," so, too, does the Pontellier marriage appear — a juicy subject for the high-society women whose company Edna has shunned. Note here that when Edna is told of Arobin's lethal reputation, she remains indifferent: She has no emotional investment in Arobin or in society's good opinion.
She has invested time and energy into imagining her first meeting with Robert and is unprepared for the harsh reality of their first encounter. Their route to Edna's house takes them through a decidedly non-romantic, even sordid neighborhood, "picking their way across muddy streets and sidewalks encumbered with the cheap display of small tradesmen." Rarely in the novel does Chopin describe a physically unpleasant scene; she uses the device here to underscore Edna's disillusionment with the reality of seeing Robert.
When they reach her home, Robert finds a photograph of Arobin. His reaction confirms the low opinion other men have of Arobin: "do you think his head is worth drawing?" Naturally Edna does not reveal the nature of her relationship with Arobin, but presses Robert to tell her what he thought about while in Mexico. His answer, that he thought of nothing but his summer on Grande Isle and felt like a "lost soul," holds some indication for her that she was on his mind. When she responds to his question about her thoughts with a near verbatim rendition of his answer, he says she is cruel, as if she is taunting him for dwelling on their time together rather than signaling that her thoughts were with him, as well.
