But when the baby is three months old, a dark spirit descends over Armand. He is sullen and stern. Gone from his eyes is the gleam of love for his wife. Sometimes he stays away from home for long periods. "And the very spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to take hold of him in his dealings with the slaves,"" the narrator says. .
One hot afternoon while sitting in her bedroom, Desiree experiences an uneasy feeling as she fingers the strands of her hair. On the bed, her baby sleeps soundly. A quadroon boy is fanning him. When she looks at her child, then at the quadroon "the son of La Blanche, one of their slaves "her "blood turned like ice in her veins, and a clammy moisture gathered upon her face," the narrator says. She dismisses the boy. A short while later, Armand enters the room to search through documents on a table. Desiree rises, walks over to him, and says, "Armand, look at our child. What does it mean?"" What it means, he tells her, is that their child is not white and that Desiree isn't either. She refuses to accept his answer, pointing out that her hair is brown, her eyes are gray, and her skin is white. .
"As white as La Blanche's, " he says. He leaves the room. She immediately writes a letter to Madame Valmonde, saying, "My mother, they tell me I am not white. Armand has told me I am not white. For God's sake tell them it is not true. You must know it is not true. I shall die. I must die. I cannot be so unhappy, and live." Madame's reply neither confirms nor denies that Desiree is white. It simply tells Monsieur and Madame Valmonde to return home with her baby "back to your mother who loves you." Desiree shows her mother's letter to Armand and asks him whether he wants her to go. "Yes,"" he says, "I want you to go." "Because of the injury she had caused him, he no longer loves her. Now it is her time to suffer, he thinks, and well she should. Without changing out of her slippers and white gown, Desiree fetches her baby from the nurse and walks away, out into the late-afternoon sun of the October day.