“Love? What do you mean, love?”

“An artist must love if he wants to be any good.”

“Rubbish. He’s got to be free, or he’s not an artist. Free of love, free of hatred, free of every defined emotion.”

Arm in arm with Rozenn, Paul walked past the two men and said quietly to her, “Our first brush with Parisian art critics.”

“That’s what it’s like at previews,” she whispered back.

He let his hand slide down onto her backside. “Let’s go and find the cellar,” he murmured.

No one could really recall whose idea it had been to make the trip to Yann Gamé’s exhibition in Paris after Jean-Rémy had abruptly gone on strike. Yann had wanted to cancel the show. He had wanted to burn, destroy and rip up the pictures, but Colette had stored them in a sealed container. She knew that artists sometimes got this way shortly before their work was due to be exhibited: they would become anxious that someone might take away their paintings, and with them all the emotions and ideas they had invested in them; they were scared that their souls would be stolen.

Colette had chosen her date well. The first of September was the rentrée, when people returned to school and to work. Everyone was back in Paris and desperate to recover from being in the provinces by gorging on culture and novelty until they were in sync with the city’s rhythm once more.

Pascale walked past the pictures like an astonished child. Emile had put one leg up and was sitting in an alcove beside a tall casement window that looked out onto Rue Lepic. Simon came over to him, clutching Grete’s hand tightly. “It’s odd seeing her when she isn’t here herself,” the fisherman said.

“She is here,” mumbled Emile, turning to gesture with a generous sweep of his arm at Paul and Rozenn, Geneviève and Alain, Colette and Marie-Claude, who was being a little too loud and jolly to cover up her nervousness and the strange feeling of being a freshly minted grandmother. They were all filing slowly past the paintings of Marianne, as if they wanted to print every last detail on their memories. Many of them stopped in front of the picture that showed her as a shimmer of dazzling light onstage. It was called The Moon Musician.

“See, she’s in their hearts and in their smiles, as they look at her and think of her. Particularly over there.”

They both looked at Yann Gamé, who was gazing at a portrait of Marianne standing by the window of the Shell Room. Her birthmark, the glowing sky behind her, the line of surf in the background: it was a picture composed of countless shades of red, and the sea glittered in her eyes. Yann had named the painting L’Amour de Marianne.

“What is it about her?” asked Simon.

“She reminds you of your dreams, back when you still had some,” Emile said slowly.

The fisherman nodded. “That’s right. Look at them—they’re all suddenly recalling their dreams.”

Colette escorted guests over to the pictures, sticking the odd yellow dot on the card bearing the title of the painting to signal that it had been optioned and would be sold after the exhibition.

Simon, Grete and Emile observed the Parisians who were now appearing in growing numbers at the door of the gallery, some of them wishing to catch up with Colette. Colette looked very frail and pale, dressed entirely in black. Her love for Sidonie had softened her features, but her grief had hardened her movements and made them angular, as if without her companion she could no longer feel the boundaries of her body.

Now a man in a tweed suit, carrying an official-looking briefcase, approached Yann, stirring the painter from his brooding silence. They walked over to L’Amour de Marianne. The man pointed to the birthmark that had seared Yann to the quick like fire. Yann shrugged, and Emile got up and leaned on Simon so that the two of them might creep closer and eavesdrop on the conversation.

“…genetic and genealogical research can use pigment disorders such as this striking example to conclude whether someone might be descended from Celtic druids…”

Yet Yann was no longer listening to the man, who was seeking to explain, in ever more excitable fashion what, in his view, the special pattern of Marianne’s flame mark might mean, namely a trail back to the people who had produced so many magicians and knights, female druids and healers in King Arthur’s day.

He glanced over at the woman in a red dress who had just entered Galerie Rohan and, slowly removing her chic dark glasses, was now looking around helplessly—at the twenty-seven oil paintings, eighteen ink drawings and thirty watercolors, all of them showing the same woman.

“Marianne!”

Marianne didn’t hear Alain’s call. She was seeing herself as she had never seen herself before. Her heart had been beating wildly and she had felt shy as she walked through the city to the art gallery in the red dress with its plunging neckline. It was knee-length, silk and a warm shade of red. She’d found it at a dressmaker’s that did alterations, where it had ended up in the dusty shop window after its owner had forgotten to pick it up for two years. She had thanked the stranger for not being brave enough to face this dress, leaving it instead for her to discover.

Nicolas, the receptionist at Pension Babette, had not only dug up the Galerie Rohan’s address, but had also gone out into the street to get a better view of Marianne in the light of the dying sun. “Breathtaking,” he had said.

And now here she was, standing in front of these pictures that revealed to her a Marianne she would never have recognized in herself at first sight. Marianne holding her face to the setting sun. Marianne sleeping. One portrait of her just after a kiss, a smile on her lips, lost in reverie. A woman playing the accordion by the sea. A nude Marianne.

She saw herself through the eyes of a man who loved her, and she discovered that she was beautiful: she had the particular beauty of women who are loved. Her soul had been transformed. She saw that she had many faces: grief and indulgence, tenderness and pride, dreams and music. And there was one picture where she knew what she had been contemplating—a dead-end road. There was boundless desolation in her expression, her eyes lifeless, her mouth despondent, the lines on her face deep and coarse.

Without her noticing, the other visitors made room for her, and as she went from picture to picture, some of them gazed after her. “Isn’t that…?” “Looks just like…” “Do you think they’re a couple?”

Finally she stood in front of L’Amour de Marianne. This face showed how she looked when she was in love. It told her all about her force and her strength, everything about her desires and her willpower: it was the essence of her being. There was a sense of freedom about it, a wild sensuality, an aura. Her love was like a blazing sea.

Yann stepped up behind her. She sensed his presence without needing to turn around. Neither did she need to ask whether he would have held her back: the power of the paintings had made this question superfluous.

“Is this how you see me?” she asked quietly.

“This is how you are,” he said.

This is how you are. Your soul is a kaleidoscope of colors.

Marianne turned to face him.

“You have a new face. What should I call it?” he asked.

She looked at him, and she felt with fierce intensity that she could do a great deal with this man in the days she had left, and also that she would never again allow herself to be deprived of this feeling.

Of all the host of possibilities that were spread before her, choosing Yann was one of the easiest. Of course she could go out into the world and love other men—taller, smaller, with different laughter lines and different eyes that glittered like stars or mountain lakes or melted chocolate. She could travel to another end of the earth, with different friends, where there were different rivers and rooms in which she and her tile would sleep alone, and there would doubtless be a cat to visit them.

But that wasn’t necessary. She chose the man standing before her. She could not do without him. They could deal with the details later.

“Marianne is alive,” she answered. “That’s the name of this face.”

Happiness is loving what we need, and needing what we love—and obtaining it, thought Yann.

“Will you come back with us to Kerdruc?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Marianne. Kerdruc had everything she expected from life.

Then, as if they could no longer bear to gaze at each other without feeling each other, they embraced with such force that their teeth collided as they kissed. They laughed, kissed a second time, more gently, but their laughter grew, and they stood there, intertwined, until it filled the entire room.