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Suddenly a voice interrupted my excited daydreaming: This is the good part, it whispered in my ear. Enjoy it while you can. You know it won’t last.

I knew this voice well. But I was not about to let it ruin my day. Nothing lasts forever, I shot back. In fact, most things that threaten to last forever often become quite annoying.

And with that, I hurried across the street and up the museum steps, thrusting myself into the powerful orbit of Naohiro’s glance.

“Hello,” he said simply, moving quickly to close the distance between us.

“Hello,” I said, slightly out of breath, although perhaps not from climbing the steps.

As we walked toward the museum entrance, he took my hand. By now, being with Naohiro seemed easy and natural. Why this should be so was as puzzling to me as any mystery that Nancy Drew was ever called upon to solve. The difference was that I could live without solving this mystery. At least, I liked to think so.

Although our original plan had been to spend the afternoon in the museum, Naohiro and I agreed the day was too beautiful to waste indoors. Besides, we had picked a bad time to visit the Orsay; tourist buses were arriving and long lines had formed at the entrance. But the decision pleased me for another reason. I wanted nothing to intrude upon my time with Naohiro, not even the great paintings in the Orsay.

I suggested we have lunch on the Île Saint-Louis, a small island filled with glorious seventeenth-century architecture and quiet, narrow streets lined with tiny shops and elegant residences. He agreed, asking if I wanted to walk or take the Métro to the island.

“Let’s walk,” I said.

It amazed me that I, who at home traveled even short distances by car, no longer thought of a forty-five-minute walk as more than a pleasant stroll. In Paris I walked almost everywhere, as most Parisiennes do. By the end of a month I understood why so few French people are overweight. My own weight, despite a hearty appetite, was lighter by five pounds.

The fact is, I hadn’t walked this much since I was a child. In those days, walking was my chief form of transportation. Mother refused to learn how to drive the family car and my frugal Scottish grandmother didn’t believe in spending money on streetcars when one had “two pairfectly good feet to tread about on.” Distance, it seemed, was not a factor. At least not if Grandmother was in charge. I remember she and I once walked from our house to that of her friend, a distance of about seven miles. Naturally I complained all the way, suggesting to Grandmother that it would cost a lot more to replace my worn-out shoes than to spend twenty cents for a streetcar ride.

Now, of course, I look back on those walks as a time of profound sharing. As we walked, we’d break into laughter at the posturing of some conceited neighborhood cat or another; try to spot the first snowdrops or last rose; comment, sometimes wickedly, on the outfits worn by innocent, unsuspecting pedestrians; pick out the houses we liked best and least (we favored designs, though that word was never used, incorporating large bay windows and façades of whitewashed bricks); all the while listening to the sounds of dinner plates being set on tables inside kitchens, radios tuned to afternoon soap operas, and children practicing scales or playing some easy beginner’s tune like “Who-o Goes the Wind.”

And so it was with Naohiro as we walked along the Seine, laughing and talking and stopping to look at the view or examine the antique postcards and used books peddled by bouquinistes from their zinc-topped boxes. I could feel it: the same subtle casting of lines between us, the same kind of connection I remembered from childhood.

Finally, we reached the Pont Saint-Louis, the tiny bridge just behind Nôtre-Dame cathedral that connects the Île de la Cité to the Île Saint-Louis. We walked over it behind a tall, dark-haired girl carrying a cello. As we reached the other side we passed an elderly woman