But the Quartier Latin had been the place to be. The students had been allowed to occupy the university. Night after night, she and Esmé had wandered into the quarter together. They’d gone down the rue Bonaparte to the chuch of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and had coffee and cognac in Les Deux Magots, and seen Jean-Paul Sartre coming and going more than once. They’d gone into the Sorbonne, and listened to students, workers and philosophers plan a new Paris Commune, and a new and better world. They might be somewhat Marxist, they were surely idealistic, but they were the eager heirs of the French Revolution, after all. And where else could one see this mixture of rhetoric, philosophy and French wit, except in old Paris?

It was a time to be young. Before long, France would reelect conservative de Gaulle again. But if the protests against the Vietnam draft had ushered in a social change in America, Claire had a feeling that something similar was likely to take place in France.

She was glad she’d been there to see it.

It had been just as she was about to return to America that Esmé had sprung his idea on her.

“I wish I could see more of you. And it’s obvious that you enjoy being here in Paris. Now that Grand-mère is gone, you need an excuse to come over. Why don’t you buy a little pied-à-terre here in Paris? You can certainly afford it.”

“It wouldn’t make sense to do that if I wasn’t going to spend quite a bit of time here. At least two or three months a year,” she pointed out.

“So why don’t you? There’s nothing to stop you.”

“I really don’t think so,” she’d said.

She’d talked to her children about it, back in America. But with their own young families to keep them busy, they didn’t think they’d be able to make much use of such a place.

“Just do it if it makes you happy, Mother,” they’d said.

But like most people who’ve been mothers, Claire didn’t find it easy to do things just for herself. So she’d turned to Phil.

After drifting slowly apart from each other, she and Frank had waited until the children were grown before quietly divorcing in the fifties. Frank had married again. She’d had a few discreet affairs, none really satisfactory. She’d concentrated on her own work.

And she’d made a small name for herself. She had written three well-received art books, and two works of fiction based on the lives of artists. Not only had these sold well in America, but to her great delight they had been published to critical acclaim in France.

And then she’d found Phil. Or, he would say, he’d found her.