In Chapter 10, the mock romance Robert has been indulging in with Edna begins to assume a genuine air. In response to Madame Ratignolle's advice, he has been avoiding Edna some days, causing her to miss him "just as one misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun when it was shining" — hardly a passionate state to begin with.
Yet Edna experiences in Chapter 10 a breakthrough in her ability to swim, which symbolizes the blossoming of her desire to leave behind social constraints, "to swim far out, where no woman had swum before." As she realizes the ease with which she can power herself through the water, "She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength." Of course she will engage in such daring later as she begins to flout convention and obey her own desires.
After her initial bold progress into the Gulf, she soon finds that she has swum farther out than she can actually swim back — she has made more progress than she can handle. Again her death is foreshadowed when she is struck by "a quick vision of death" that terrifies her. Léonce fails to appreciate her terror, pointing out that "I was watching you" as if his placid observation from shore could prevent her from drowning, or from later having an affair with Alcée Arobin.
Edna's childlike aspect is emphasized in the description of her as a "little tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who of a sudden realizes its powers, and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with over-confidence." Of course, this description applies to not only learning to swim but also to her actions later in the novel when she feels the power of refusing to follow certain social conventions.
