After lunch we walked together up the crooked cobbled streets of Montmartre. Actually I was glad to have company as a woman walking alone always feels a little vulnerable, especially in an area of narrow alleys like this—wild, bohemian, untamed. I wanted to seek out Maxim Noah, Sid’s cousin, just in case he had any information about what might have happened to them. I had no idea where he lived and worked but I did now know that a group of artists could be found at the building they called Le Bateau-Lavoir—the laundry boat—and I suspected that Montmartre was small enough that artists knew each other. Narrow cobbled streets led to flights of steps. Respectable stone houses now gave way to shacks as we went higher. There were goats tethered on a plot of grass and someone was growing what looked like beans and asparagus in a small garden behind a shed. It was a strange transformation to be in this primitive and rural environment and yet only steps from a civilized city. Ellie, of course, found it enchanting, especially when we came up the final twisty street to the summit and the great half-built dome of the church reared above us dazzling white, while below us the whole city was spread at our feet.

“Isn’t it magnificent?” she said, spreading wide her arms as if to embrace it. “Being up here with you makes one forget all of one’s troubles, doesn’t it? The rest of the world simply doesn’t matter. I am all-powerful.”

I looked at her fondly. “You are too young to have troubles,” I said. “Inconveniences, to be sure, but…”

“You don’t know the half of it,” she said. “And I can’t tell you. It’s something I have to figure out and get through on my own.” She turned away from me, staring out to where the city melted into distance and the great shape of the Eiffel Tower dominated all else. Then suddenly she swung around, all smiles again. “I’m so glad I met you, Molly. It’s good to have a friend in a strange city, isn’t it?”

I agreed that it was.

“Molly, would you do me a favor? Would you say that we’ve been together all the time I’ve been here? That we’ve seen the sights together?”

“Why should I say that?”

She hesitated, looking down at her neat little shoes, now rather mud-splattered. “Just in case anyone finds out about my being here alone and wants to know.”

I took it that by “anyone” she meant Peter. “How could anyone find out, unless you tell them?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. I think I’m safe, but…” She looked around, then exclaimed. “Look. There is the windmill that Jean told us about. The one with the dancing.”