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I sat thinking about how once I was daring not only on the inside but on the outside as well. In my adolescent years, after my father died, I feared nothing. Or at least I pretended to fear nothing. I made dangerous choices in those years, thinking myself bold and adventurous. Later I would come to understand I hadn’t been daring at all, just driven by confusion and hormones. The person capable of true daring, I knew now, possessed two admirable qualities: curiosity and courage.

Given that definition, I guess in my adult years I had committed some daring acts. Not anything like living among Amazon tribes, as a friend of mine, a writer, had done. But a few years back I did go head-to-head in interviews with the likes of George F. Will and William F. Buckley, Jr. That, I decided, was daring enough for me.

As I showered and dressed, I thought of Naohiro; of how little I knew about him. Coming back from Giverny on the train I did learn a few things: that he worked in Tokyo in the electronics industry, lived in an apartment there, traveled a great deal, and had studied as a young man in California. He said little about his personal life and I did not press him for details.

But I wanted to. Most of all I wanted to know: was he married and did he have a family? Still, I did not ask. What lay at the bottom of my unusual reticence, I suspected, was a wish to avoid the disappointment I might feel if his answers were not the ones I wanted to hear.

I slipped on the black silk dress I’d bought at the small shop in Saint-Germain. Around my shoulders I draped the antique shawl—thin cut-velvet the color of a ripe tomato—I’d picked up in a thrift shop on the rue du Bac. Looking in the mirror I fancied myself—with excessive generosity—quite the chic Parisienne. Already, fantasies were flitting like butterflies in my head. About Naohiro and me.

Oh, God, I thought, walking from the hotel to the restaurant. Is this what I left my job and home for? To become gripped by an intense infatuation? One with no possible outcome except disappointment? The feeling depressed me.

But the truth is, it exhilarated me even more. I thought of Doris Lessing’s observation that “A woman without a man cannot meet a man, any man, of any age, without thinking, even if it’s for a half-second, ‘Perhaps this is THE man.’ ”

If ever there was living proof that Lessing had scored a bull’s-eye with that one, I was it.

When I arrived, Naohiro was there waiting for me. Tan Dinh was a small, elegant restaurant with exquisite food and an impressive wine list. Naohiro asked if he could order for both of us. I said yes. Wine appeared; a Bordeaux. Then one by one the elegant dishes arrived: Saigon chicken rolls, steamed ravioli with smoked goose, lobster prepared with ginko leaves, and a mysterious, delicious dessert flavored with hazelnuts.

As the evening progressed I grew more and more comfortable with Naohiro. The wine, no doubt, helped. We talked of books and movies, of the pleasures and pains of traveling, and finally of ourselves.

Naohiro began by telling me about his two children, a son and a daughter, both in their early twenties. His daughter lived with him; his son was away at school. He spoke of them with great affection. And with humor, too, as he described his daughter’s attempt to curl her straight hair with a permanent.

“I think,” Naohiro said, “she was trying to look like Cher.” We both laughed. But I think he knew what I was waiting to hear.

“Their mother,” he said, “died two years ago.”

Something in the way he said this suggested I should not ask any more about the matter. Still, I felt he had confided something that was painful for him.

I told him about my family, then about my job and why I had left it to come to France. He asked me to tell him about my work.

“It’s never the same,” I said. “That’s one of the things I like about it. One week I’m doing a story on Siamese twins and the next I’m interviewing Jeanne Moreau over lunch at a fancy