Gustav has passed; thoughts on Kate Chopin and The Storm

Hurricane Gustav has passed, and my friends and family in Louisiana are doing well. I breathe a sigh of relief and gratitude.
Hurricanes remind me of a short story by Louisiana author Kate Chopin, who wrote the 1899 novel The Awakening. "The Awakening," like a number of 19th century novels, has the general plot of "married woman wakes from her stuporous life, finds herself, has an affair, meets tragic end." (The great novels Anna Karenina by Tolstoy and Madame Bovary by Flaubert come to mind easily. House of Mirth by Edith Wharton is a variation on the theme.)
Anyway, the Chopin short story is called "The Storm." (Read the story online. It's fairly short.) In "The Storm," Calixta is waiting at home alone for a hurricane to pass; her husband and son have gone to town. An old flame of hers -- the wonderfully named Alcee Laballiere -- is passing by and stops by her house to wait out the storm. One thing leads to another. We come to lines like ... "when he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life's mystery." (I think that's a well-written line and take it seriously, but it makes me smile, too.)
The storm ends, Alcee goes on his way, Calixta's husband and son return. Amazingly, tragedy does NOT ensue. Instead, Calixta is very sweet to her husband and makes him a nice dinner. Alcee writes his wife a thoughtful letter and tells her to extend her vacation in Biloxi; the wife is relieved and glad to get more time away to relax.
Chopin concludes, "So the storm passed, and every one was happy."
Definitely a different take on the usual "tragic end" plotline! My book tells me this story was written in 1898 but not published until 1969. Not hard to see why.