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ok, here's the $1000 question - Why did Edna do it? I can't believe it was just about Robert.
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I think it was because she was always somewhat weak compared to her friends. She did not have the strength and independence to live as Mademoiselle Reiz had done so, as a woman who was beholden to know man and dedicated to her art, but she also did not have the forbearance to accept her "fate" as it were as Madame Ratigonolle. She never was able to simply stand on her own, I think that is part of the reason she started to the flirtation with Arobin during the time that Robert was gone. She simple shifted her dependency from her husband onto Robert.
Perhaps she could not bare the thought of having to return to her husband though she never officially "left" him, that is they were still bound by marriage she had begun to detach herself from him, but with Robert removed from the picture, there was little she could do but simply return back to the life she had before she met Robert, but after she had within herself already severed those bonds she could not fathom returning to it again.
It reminds me of The Story of An Hour, in which a woman discovers that her husband was killed, and by her own admission he was not cruel to her, and it did not seem as if she was dreadfully unhappy in her marriage, but she was overwhelmed with a great sense or freedom at realizing she was no longer beholden to a man, than she discovers it was a mistake and her husband was in fact still alive, she simply was unable to give up that new found freedom even though it only lasted a moment, and just dropped dead right on the spot.
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I was thinking along those same lines but she had the little house, she could have lived there, but as you said I think she just wasn't strong enough to live in that little house.
And why did Robert leave, was it because as Mrs Rat. said, he looked at it like a "summer fling" and Edna was fooled into thinking it was something more?
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I think Robert left becasue he genueinely cared for Edna, and he did not want to be whatever the male equvilavient of a mistress would be. He didn't want to just be the guy on the side. Perhaps when Edna left him to call upon Mrs. Rat. (haha I love that) it was a sign or realization to him that he would never fully have Edna she would always be torn between the two different lives.
