She stopped Vincent from adding another log to the stove. “Do not waste the wood,” she said. “Let’s go out. We need to celebrate!” She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

He wanted to say And where will we get the money? His meager salary was spent on books and art supplies, the rest tucked away in a small nest egg for the baby.

Simone stamped her foot. “We are celebrating and that is that! You will not argue with me today, Monsieur Peruggia!”

“I am not arguing,” he said, and how could he? Simone, who never complained, not about the cold, nor the shared bathroom in the hall, nor the lack of money. He had not provided her with much. How could he deprive her of a small celebration?

He looked into her lovely face, fuller than usual from pregnancy, and managed a smile. He was to be a father, something he had never imagined. Still, he worried. Simone had a history of frailty and illness that attacked her lungs, persistent colds and coughs that lingered, a bout with pneumonia last winter. Though right now, she glowed.

“All right,” he said, stepping in between stacks of books, many dog-eared and scribbled with notes, his life-long quest to overcome his lack of formal education. “I have something to tell you about what I was doing today at the Louvre.”

“Tell me,” she said.

“Not yet,” he said, teasing. “At supper.”

In minutes, Simone had pinned her hair up under a cloche hat, then tugged on a heavy sweater, the wool stretching over her newly expanded frame.

“Come,” she said, extending her delicate hand.

Outside, Vincent wrapped his arm around Simone’s shoulder, and she tucked herself into his side. He felt proud. And a little hopeful. Perhaps this exhibition would bring him the sales they so desperately needed. Yes, he said to himself, things will get better. He watched Simone slide her hands inside her sweater and rest them on her swollen belly. He could not believe they would soon be having a child.

They made their way across the Canal Saint-Martin. “Built by Napoleon,” he said, his head crammed with the many facts he had read. Then, along the hilly rue de Belleville where they stopped for a view of the city below, the mix of gaslights and the new electric lights like incandescent fireflies.

“It is always so beautiful,” Simone said, her breath generating white clouds as she spoke.

Vincent said nothing; Paris was neither his home nor his city. He had never felt welcomed here, always an outsider, except with Simone.

Once they left their poor, bohemian neighborhood, the smell of slightly soured goat’s milk and garbage was exchanged for clean, cold air tinged with the aroma of chestnuts sold on corners in little paper bags that Vincent sometimes brought home, washed down with cold white wine, and called dinner.

When Simone grew tired, they took one of the new motorized omnibuses to the Place des Vosges, with its fine homes and mansions, which Vincent pointed out had once played host to Cardinal Richelieu, Victor Hugo, courtesans, and queens. One day, he thought, he would buy them a grand house like one of these. Simone deserved it, this woman whom he loved beyond description.