discovered?
CHAPTER VIIITHE PORTRAIT OF MYSTERY
It was well into April before Louis came back to school, looking a
trifle thin and pale, but otherwise not impaired by his serious
accident. Carol and Sue traveled back and forth with him on the trolley
several times, but never once picked up courage to ask him the question,
the answer to which they were burning to know,--why had he been afraid
of the strange portrait in Monsieur's room?It was not till one evening when he had come over to see Dave that the
subject was broached. Dave was detained out in the barn, helping his
father with a sick farm-horse, and while they were waiting for him in
the living-room the talk drifted to Monsieur and his devoted kindness
during Louis's illness."He simply couldn't do enough for me," the boy asserted. "Beginning
with his insisting on my having his room, he loaded me with delicacies
and attentions of every sort the whole time. I began by quite despising
him, but he's been so jolly good to me that I've just _got_ to like him,
whether or no! Honestly, it's almost pathetic sometimes, he tries so
hard. I feel like a brute if I don't respond in just the way he wants me
to. He's stopped talking about all the things he knows I don't care for,
and even stands for my talking about mechanical engineering and that
sort of thing. And that's going some for _him_!""Louis," ventured Sue, a little timidly, "do you mind telling us now why
you hated and were afraid of that portrait? You were going to tell me
that day, if you remember, when we were interrupted."The boy looked hesitant for a moment. Then he replied:"I believe I might as well. It can't hurt any one that I can see. I've
had the most peculiar feeling about that picture ever since my accident.
Before that I'd seen it, of course, but had never thought much about
it, and those two others that are covered I only thought were just
another eccentricity of Monsieur's. He's awfully eccentric, anyway,
about a number of things. But after I landed in that room with my
chopped foot, and had to stay there when I didn't want to and lie
staring day and night at that picture at the foot of my bed, first I
began to hate it and then I actually became afraid of it. You'll hardly
believe me, girls, when I tell you that I covered up my head with the
bedclothes at times, when I was alone in the room, so that I wouldn't
have to look at it.""But _why_?" interrupted Carol. "What was strange about it?"

"Well," Louis answered, "it's not so much that there's anything strange
about the picture _itself_; it's more the way it made me feel and the
way Monsieur acted about it and--well, a dream I had about it one

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