“Non. Okay?” Her French accent on the single word sounded endearing and he smiled as Arthur watched the exchange, unable to speak up in his limited French. Something about the girl left him speechless. “No …” She repeated the gesture Sam had made to indicate eating and shook her head.

“Why?” He struggled to find the word in French. “Pourquoi?” He suddenly glanced at her hand in panic. Maybe she was married. Maybe her husband was going to kill him. But there was no ring there. She seemed awfully young, but maybe she was a widow.

“Parce que.” She spoke slowly, wondering if he would understand, but almost certain he wouldn't “Je ne veux pas.”

Arthur spoke up then in a whisper.

“She says she doesn't want to.”

“Why?” Sam looked hurt. “We're nice guys. Only lunch … food …” He made the eating gesture again. “… café … okay? … Five minutes?” He held up five fingers on one hand. “Okay?” He held out both hands, palms up, in a gesture of helplessness and peace, and she looked suddenly weary as she shook her head. She looked as though she had had years of this, years of soldiers harassing her, and strangers in her homeland.

“No German … No American … No … No café … No …” She did the now familiar eating gesture again.

Sam folded his hands in supplication and for a minute he looked as though he might burst into tears. But at least she was still standing there, listening to him. He pointed to himself and then to Arthur. “North Africa … Italy … now France …” He pretended to shoot, he pantomimed Arthur's wounded arm, and looked at her imploringly, “One café… five minutes … please …”

She seemed almost sorry this time when she shook her head and then started to turn away. “Non … je regrette …” And then she walked away quickly as they stared after her. Even Sam didn't follow her this time. There was no point. But when Arthur started to walk away, Sam wouldn't follow.

“Come on, man, she's gone, and she doesn't want to see us.”

“I don't care.” He sounded like a disappointed schoolboy. “Maybe she'll change her mind when she comes back.”

“The only thing that'll be different is that maybe this time she'll have her father and seven brothers come and knock our teeth out. She told us no, and she meant it, now let's not waste all day standing here. There are a million other women in Paris, dying to show their gratitude to the liberating heroes.”

“I don't give a damn.” Sam wasn't moving. “This girl's different.”

“You're damn right she is.” Arthur was finally getting angry. Very angry. “She told us to take a hike. And personally, I intend to follow her advice, no matter how good her legs are. Are you coming, or not?”

Sam hesitated for a moment and then followed him, but with obvious regret. And wherever they went that day, all he could think of was the beautiful girl with red hair on the rue d' Arcole with the green eyes that blazed fire and sadness. There was something about her that haunted him, and after dinner that night, he left Arthur at the table with three girls, and quietly slipped away to walk slowly down her street, just to be near her. It was a crazy thing to do, and even he knew it, but he couldn't help himself. He wanted to see her one more time, even if only from a distance. It wasn't just her looks, there was something more about her. Something he couldn't define or understand, but he wanted to know her … or at least see her…. He had to.

He stopped at a little cafe across the street, and ordered a cup of the bitter coffee that everyone drank black and without sugar, and sat staring at her doorway, and then watched in amazement as he saw her walking down the street with her string bag still full of books, and walk slowly up the steps to her house and stop there for a moment, looking for a key in her coin purse and glancing over her shoulder, as though to be sure no one was following her. Sam leapt to his feet, dropped a handful of coins on the table, and ran across the street, as she glanced up, startled. She looked as though she were going to bolt, and then held her ground with defiance. In occupied Paris, she had faced more ominous men than Sam, and she looked as though she were ready to face one more. But her eyes were more tired than angry this time when she faced him.

“Bonjour, mademoiselle.” He looked more sheepish now than he had before, and she shook her head, like a mother scolding a schoolboy.

“Pourquoi vous me poursuivez?”

He had no idea what she had said, and this time he didn't have Arthur to rely on, but she spoke more English than he had originally thought. She repeated her question to him in her gentle husky voice. “Why you do that?”

“I want to talk to you.” He spoke softly, as though caressing the graceful arms that shivered slightly in the cool night air. She had no sweater, only the ugly old blue dress.

She waved vaguely toward the people in the streets, as though offering them up instead. “Many girls in Paris … happy talking Americans.” Her eyes grew hard then. “Happy talking Germans, happy talking Americans …” He understood her.

“And you only speak to Frenchmen?”

She smiled and shrugged. “French people talk Germans too … Americans …” She wanted to tell him how France had betrayed itself, how ugly it had been, but there was no way to say all that with the little English she knew, and after all he was a stranger.

“What is your name? Mine is Sam.”

She hesitated for a long time, thinking he didn't need to know it, and then shrugged, as though talking to herself. “Solange Bertrand.” But she did not hold out her hand in introduction. “You go?” She looked at him hopefully and he gestured toward the cafe across the street.

“One cup of coffee, then I go? Please?”

For an instant, he thought she would get angry again, and then, her shoulders drooping for the first time, she seemed to hesitate.

“Je suis très fatiguée.” She pointed to the books. He knew she couldn't be going to school at the moment. Everything was disrupted.

“Do you go to school usually?”

“Teaching … little boy at home … very sick … tuberculose.”

He nodded. Everything about her seemed noble. “Aren't you hungry?” She didn't seem to understand and he made the eating gesture again, and this time she laughed, showing beautiful teeth and a smile that made his heart do cartwheels.

“D'accord… d'accord …” She held up one hand, fingers splayed. “Cinq minutes … five minute!”

“You'll have to drink fast and their coffee is pretty hot …” He felt as though he were flying as he took the string bag from her and led her across the street to the cafe. The owner greeted her as though he knew her, and seemed interested by the fact that she was there with an American soldier. She called him Julien and they chatted for a moment before she ordered a cup of tea, but she refused to order anything to eat until Sam ordered for her. He ordered some cheese and bread, and in spite of herself, she devoured it. He noticed then for the first time, how thin she was when he looked at her closely. The proud shoulders were mostly bones, and she had long graceful fingers. She sipped the hot tea carefully and seemed grateful for the steaming liquid.

“Why you do this?” She asked him after she had sipped the tea. She shook her head slowly. “Je ne comprends pas.”

He was unable to explain even to her why he felt so compelled to speak to her, but the moment he had laid eyes on her, he knew he had to.

“I'm not sure.” He looked pensive, and she seemed not to understand. He threw up his hands to show her he didn't know himself. And then he tried to explain it, touching his heart, and then his eyes. “I felt something different the first time I saw you.”

She seemed to disapprove and glanced at the other girls in the cafe, with American soldiers, but he was quick to shake his head. “No, no … not like that… more …” He indicated “bigger” with his hands, and she looked sadly at him as though she knew better.

“Ça n'existe pas … it do not exist.”

“What doesn't?”

She touched her heart and indicated “bigger,” as he had.

“Have you lost someone in the war? …”He hated to ask, “Your husband?”

Slowly she shook her head, and then not knowing why, she told him. “My father … my brother … the Germans kill them … my mother die of tuberculose. … My father, my brother, dans la Résistance.”

“And you?”

“J'ai soigné ma mére … I … take sick my mother …”

“You took care of your mother?” She nodded.

“J'avais peur”—she waved her hand in annoyance at herself, and then indicated fright—“de la Résistance … because my mother she need me very much…. My brother was sixteen …” Her eyes filled with tears then, and without thinking he reached out and touched Solange's hand, and miraculously she let him, for an instant at least, before drawing it away to take another sip of tea, which gave her the breather she needed from the emotions of the moment.

“Do you have other family?” She looked blank. “More brothers? Sisters? Aunts and uncles?”

She shook her head, her eyes serious. She had been alone for two years now. Alone against the Germans. Tutoring to make enough money to survive. She had often thought of the Resistance after her mother died, but she was too frightened, and her brother had died such a pointless death. He hadn't died for glory, he had died betrayed by one of their French neighbors. Everyone seemed to be collaborating, and a traitor. Except for a handful of loyal Frenchmen, and they were being hunted down and slaughtered. Everything had changed. And Solange along with it. The laughing, ebullient girl she had once been, had become a smoldering, angry, distant woman. And yet this boy had somehow reached out and touched her and she knew it. Worse yet, she liked it. It made her feel human again.