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which Louise had relocked after her, and mount the stairs. A moment's silence, followed by agitated voices and hurried footsteps approaching my room. Monsieur Bidout burst in shouting "Où est Louise? Où est me fille? You must know and you must tell me".

Louise's address was hidden in my pocket; but I had promised not to give her away, so I answered: "Your daughter left in a cab, with a sheet containing her belongings. That is all I know".

Whereupon M. Bidout burst into tears and walked up and down the room sobbing out his sorrow, anger and despair. They had always doted on her. She was ungrateful. This scandal would deprive him of his singing lessons in a private school. My sympathy was no less sincere because stimulated by a feeling of guilt.

While M. Bidout was passing tragic moments of anxiety, news from Louise informed me that she was agreeably spending the time in bed reading "Les Demi-Vierges" which she hoped I would have the good fortune to read also.

Whether her father finally found her and brought her back; or whether she came back of her own accord, I cannot remember. The fact remains that not long after the exciting event, a very relieved M. Bidout informed me that Louise was resting in bed and for the moment was unable to see visitors.

This certainly relaxed the tension and allowed me to feel mildly curious about the preparations being made in the back room adjoining mine for the arrival of another pupil. A morbid mental depression was the after effect of the poisons I had been imbibing for the last few months. Romantic, I needed a glamorous reality to give life its meaning. Planted in this bog with Louise as the ugly troll stirring with long claws the dirt and mud around her, all phantasy abandoned me, even that of my art. Like all very young people, I found eternity in the present and was unable to reason myself into reaction.