In many ways Marie found her aunt remarkably unchanged, but she did notice that she looked thinner, and that she was rather weak. That evening Aunt Éloïse took her aside.

“My dear Marie, I am very glad you came when you did. I’m perfectly all right, I am very fortunate to have lived in quite good health for so long. But the doctor tells me that I shall be leaving you in a little while.”

“How long?”

“About six months. So I shall be able to see the summer in. I love it so much when the chestnut trees blossom in May. But I shall be glad to go by August, when it becomes much too hot—unless, of course, le bon Dieu is planning to send me somewhere even hotter.”

“I’m sure He isn’t,” said Marie, with an affectionate smile.

But that decided her. She discussed it with Claire the next morning, who entirely supported her decision.

“Marc,” she said, “Claire and I will stay in Paris at least until the month of August. Will you help us rent an apartment? Somewhere near Aunt Éloïse, I think.”

“I was hoping,” he said, “that you’d do that.”

For the next six months, they lived in a delightful apartment just northwest of the Luxembourg Gardens, near the great baroque church of Saint-Sulpice.

Marie had never lived on the Left Bank before, and she found that she liked it. Two minutes’ walk northward and she was in the aristocratic Saint-Germain district. If she continued northward up the rue Bonaparte, in less than five minutes she was at the river, looking straight across at the Louvre. If she turned eastward, on the other hand, along the boulevard Saint-Germain, in five minutes she’d be in the heart of the university Latin Quarter, where she could cross to the Île de la Cité under the elegant spire of the Sainte-Chapelle.

Marie saw Aunt Éloïse every day. Meanwhile Marc arranged for Claire to take a course at the École des Beaux-Arts, at the top of the rue Bonaparte.

Marie and her daughter had always had an easy relationship. Toward the end of her school days there had been the usual moments of friction to be expected between a mother and a daughter of that age; but the huge consciousness of the war, with its daily tragedies and privations, did not leave much space for family strife.

The sudden death of her father had matured Claire, as well. She knew that her mother needed company, and made a point of being her friend as well as her daughter. They often went out together and if, as sometimes happened, a stranger wondered if they might be sisters, she was both amused and happy to see her mother’s pleasure at the compliment.