" shall come back as soon as I can; I shall find you here."

One more time, she gives into her biological role. During Adele's labor pains, Edna recalls her own childbirth, an event that offered very different kinds of memories of an awakening than she has now. "Edna began to feel uneasy. She was seized with a vague dread. Her own like experiences seemed far away, unreal, and only half remembered. She recalled faintly an ecstasy of pain, the heavy odor of chloroform, a stupor which had deadened sensation, and an awakening to find a little new life to which she had given being, added to the great unnumbered multitude of souls that come and go." As a result,

Edna "began to wish she had not come; her presence was not necessary. She might have invented a pretext for staying away; she might even invent a pretext now for...
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