Liam was in a particularly affectionate mood, wrapping his little arms around my neck when I picked him up and covering my cheek with sticky kisses. So I sat him on my knee and bounced him to his favorite song, “Horsey, horsey don’t you stop. Just let your feet go clippety clop.” Watching him laugh gleefully as he flew up and down made me forget my anxiety for a few moments and did us both good. But then, of course he was not as anxious to be left with Madeleine and I felt guilty when I crept away while he was engaged with his Noah’s ark. It wasn’t right to keep leaving my son like this. But then I reminded myself that rich children were raised entirely by nannies and only saw their mothers on special occasions. I knew he was safe and warm and well-fed and I simply couldn’t carry him around with me all day.

I set off down Rue des Martyrs and made first for the Nouvelle Athènes. I could see the usual group of young men around their table as I walked in. The enticing aroma of coffee enveloped me and I thought how lovely it would be to be free enough to spend every morning sitting with friends, with all the time in the world. Then I reminded myself that as well as having no set schedule and no responsibilities, these young men lived in a tumbledown shack without heat or running water and had to sell a painting in order to eat. Not such an enviable life after all!

Some of them looked up as I came in and I noticed that Maxim Noah was among them today.

“It’s the good lady from America,” he said. “You have had second thoughts? You come to buy a painting today?”

“As if she’d buy one from you when she could have one of mine at a good price,” the young Spaniard Picasso said. “One can see that the lady has good taste.”

I had to smile. “I’m afraid I can’t afford to buy from either of you, even at a good price,” I said. “I came back because I need your help. I am still looking for my missing friends—for your cousin, Maxim. I have heard nothing from them since I arrived here and I am very concerned. But in the past two days I have received two postcards and I wondered what you could tell me about the paintings on them.”

I placed the two postcards in front of them.

“Old style Impressionism of the last century,” one of them muttered. But Picasso said, “Surely, they are Cassatt? I recognize the brushstrokes.”

“Cassatt?” I tried to remember if this was a word I had heard before.

“Mary Cassatt,” Picasso said. “Not a bad painter for an Impressionist.”

“Do you know where I would find her? Does she live in Paris?”