Miss Yvonne took me up and told me that the nurse was out for the afternoon, and that Monsieur was lying down in Louis's room. So, for the first time since his accident, I actually saw Louis without a lot of other people in the room. We chatted for a while about school matters and what we had all been doing while he was laid up. And Louis told me how much better he was, how he was soon going to be allowed to get up, and that the nurse was going in a few days. After that we were both quiet for a few moments. It was one of those pauses that sometimes come in conversation, which get so prolonged that you hardly know how to break them. Then, just to end the silence, I asked Louis why Monsieur had insisted on his being in this room, and how inconvenient it must have been for Monsieur. To my surprise, Louis became much excited and said:
"I can't think whatever made him do it that day! I didn't want to be here. I'm horribly uncomfortable about it all the time. I hate it! It would have been so much more sensible to have put me in my own room on the ground floor. And, Sue, what do you think?" Here Louis sank his voice to a whisper. "I came to myself one day, out of a sort of stupor that I'd been in, and found him kneeling by the side of the bed and actually kissing my hand! I was so astonished and disgusted that I snatched it away, weak as I was. He never said a word, but rose and walked out of the room. What does it all mean?"
"I'm sure I don't know, Louis," I replied; "but tell me, do you know anything about those portraits that hang on the wall opposite your bed? Why are two covered up, and who is that boy in the middle?"
To my astonishment, Louis seized hold of my arm and whispered:
"Sue, Sue, I hate those pictures. I hate that one in the middle. I'm afraid of it! I—"
Before he could say any more we heard Miss Yvonne coming up the stairs to tell me that my time was up and that Louis must rest. And so he couldn't go on.
But why, why does Louis hate the picture of that boy, and why, above all things, is he afraid of it? Was there ever so curious a mystery?