They know, though, how to travel thriftily, how to save their receipts and write off what they can as professional expenses. Meg Sloan, for the last ten years or so, has made hand-painted, one-of-a-kind greeting cards, whimsical lines and squiggles on squares of rag paper that retail for five dollars apiece, and she has come to see her trips as opportunities to scout out new ideas. Roy Sloan, who heads a technical college in downtown Milwaukee, makes solemn, uncomfortable forays to similar institutions when traveling abroad, keeping notes on curriculum and entrance requirements and capital costs. These tax write-offs serve as an enabling tactic since both Roy and Meg grew up in frugal midwestern families and require the assurance that things are not as costly as they appear.

Certainly Paris is far from cheap. Their hotel is small, twenty rooms in all, and inconspicuous, but charges five hundred francs a night, which is one hundred dollars at the current rate. Thirty years ago the young, honeymooning Sloans stayed in this same hotel and paid the grand sum of twelve dollars. “Which included breakfast,” says Meg, who, with her merciless memory for the cost of things, equivocates and subtracts and mildly despairs. Admittedly, though, there have been a number of improvements since that time: chiefly, tiny module bathrooms fitted into the corners of each room, and orange juice of an oddly dark hue served along with the croissants and coffee.

For ten days now they’ve sat at the same little table in the hotel breakfast room and buttered their already buttery croissants and helped themselves to apricot jam. Away from home, Meg abandons her dieting and exercise program. She grows careless and easy about her body which, in a matter of days, takes on a sleek, milky look. She has a different fragrance about her; her hands wander more rhythmically, almost musically.