The Lower Deep Read Online Free PDF

for long. Too much a free spirit to be comfortable with such an arrangement, she had sought a place of her own and found a small, vacant house on one of the town's little side roads. Dr. Louis Clermont owned it. Might she rent it?
    She might, he told her, and let her have it for next to nothing because he admired her for coming to help "his people" in what she probably felt was the end of the earth.
    The woman who responded now when Clermont climbed the veranda steps and lightly tapped the door was twenty-six years old and shapely, with the most expressive dark brown eyes he had ever looked into. In her simple, sleeveless dress of pale yellow cotton she looked almost indecently cool. "Hello, Dannie," he said in French. "You busy?"
    "Never too busy for you," she replied with a smile of welcome. "Come on in."
    He walked into the living room, sat down unbidden, and looked around as she followed his example. "You know, you've done wonders with this place. I should come here more often."
    "Don't get ideas. I mean, don't hike the rent on me, because I love it here. My heart would break if I had to move."
    "Wouldn't dream," Clermont said, then leaned toward her and let a frown displace his smile. "Dannie, I'm here about Ginny Jourdan. Can we talk about her a little? I guess you know she's a patient of mine."
    "Of course, Doctor:"
    "Her folks didn't ask me to do this. I'm here on my own."
    "I understand."
    "But they're patients of mine, too, of course. You might say I'm here as a family friend."
    She nodded.
    "So tell me," Clermont said, "have they cause to be so worried, Dannie? Has the girl suddenly changed all that much?"
    "There's been a change. I'm not sure I would call it a sudden one."
    Clermont looked at her and waited.
    "I'd say it began about a month ago," Dannie said. "Yes, at least that far back. You have to take into account that Ginny has always been a very special girl, extra pretty, extra bright, extra—well, just outstanding. But as a friend of the family you know that. I'm forgetting."
    "I wish all seventeen-year-olds were as nice."
    "Then about a month ago she began—I guess you'd have to say she began to lose interest. Not only in her studies, but in all the other activities at school, too. I noticed it but didn't think too much about it because she'd acquired a boyfriend."
    Clermont's bushy brows went up. "Oh? Who?"
    "A boy named Eddie Forbin. A nice boy, really nice. So I thought she was probably just daydreaming."
    "That's what her folks thought."
    "When her grades began to fall off, though, I had a talk with her and realized it was serious. Her attitude had changed. Even her attitude toward me."
    "You've always been her favorite teacher, her folks tell me."
    "She liked me, I'm sure. But little by little she became—what shall I call it?—indifferent? Worse than that, really. Disdainful. Even hostile."
    Clermont rubbed his Abe Lincoln beard. Could this whole business of Ginny Jourdan's personality change be an exaggeration? Leonie, the girl's mother, was inclined to be a worrier, and Maurice Jourdan had always gone along with his wife's every whim.
    Yet, damn it, the child had changed. He himself had noticed it, the two or three times he had run into her of late. Last time, for instance. They had bumped shopping baskets in the marketplace, and normally she would have said something like, "What's up, Doc? When are you going to break down and get married, so you can send your wife to do the shopping?" But all she'd wanted was to get away from him as fast as possible, it seemed. She'd left him standing there with his mouth open.
    "I'm not helping much, am I?" Dannie André said.
    "Maybe we're just looking for trouble."
    "I don't know what to believe, really. Would you like me to have a talk with her boyfriend and see what he thinks? I know him well enough to approach him." Her lovely face took on a frown. "He's already told me one thing about Ginny that I didn't know. I guess you're aware that some of the kids