At the rue de Rivoli, there was traffic—the new motorcars and taxis overtaking the horse-drawn coaches—and they got off the omnibus to walk along the river where it was quieter. The trees were bare, gray trunks, spindly branches. A tugboat dragged a barge along the water, a swarm of seabirds above, squawking. The wind picked up, rustling Vincent’s thick black hair and lifting Simone’s wide skirt, which she struggled to keep down.

“Are you warm enough, my darling?” Vincent asked, always worried about her delicate health.

“Yes,” she said. “I am wonderful!” Simone got her skirt in place and smiled up at him.

He knew she would not admit she was cold and ruin their time out together. He offered her one of his rare smiles and kissed her forehead.

They kept walking, debating where they might eat. Simone suggested one café; Vincent countered with another, cheaper one. Then suddenly he said, “We will eat at La Pêche Miraculeuse!”

“What?” Simone stopped walking and turned to face him. “Am I really with Vincenzo Peruggia, the man who complains of having no money from the moment he rises until the moment he sleeps?”

“I never sleep,” he said, which was true, but he laughed, and Simone did too. “It is a celebration, a splurge, and we shall do it!” With his arm wrapped more tightly around her, they passed the statue of Henri Quatre where the Île de la Cité came to a sharp point and into the small park at the river’s edge. Just beyond, a tugboat blasted curls of smoke into the sky, everything gray, black, and white like a painting by Edouard Manet, whom Simone had come to admire and even emulate in her paintings.

Just beyond the park was the restaurant with its view over the Seine.

Inside, a din of chatter and clatter, the smell of seafood mixing with cigarettes.

“Oysters,” Vincent proclaimed as soon as they’d been seated at a table beside a window, which he had insisted upon. “And a bottle of your finest Muscadet.”

The waiter arched an eyebrow.

“Is there a problem?” Vincent asked, glowering and smoothing his threadbare jacket.

“No, monsieur,” the waiter said and darted away.

“Did you see the way he looked at me? As if I did not belong here, as if I am an alien, a criminal!”

“Hush,” Simone said. “Do not spoil this. It was nothing.”

“Nothing? He looked at me as if I were some beggar come to rob his fancy restaurant.”

“Vincent, please, not now.”

Vincent lowered his head, humbled.

Simone lifted his chin with her delicate hand. “I am here with the smartest, handsomest man in the room.”

“Smartest?”

“Who reads and studies more than you?” she asked. “Though I see you do not dispute handsomest!” she said. “And soon to be the most successful!”

Vincent could not help but smile.

When the oysters came, Vincent and Simone squeezed lemon on them and ate slowly, sipping salty water from the shells. They finished the bottle of wine and Vincent, possibly a little drunk, ordered a second bottle to drink with the pommes de terre à l’huile, potatoes cooked in oil with warm, crusty bread for dipping.