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He could feel her kindness? And he had called her a heroine. Her heart swelled with pride. She vowed that she would do all she could to live up to the brave young woman he believed her to be.

For the next month, Colette felt like herself again, and it was glorious.

Stealing from Madame Virlogeux had made her bold; knowing that the proceeds of her theft might do some good in the fight against the Germans had made her proud.

Many in Paris had hurried to cozy up with the Germans, betraying their neighbors for a bit of favored treatment, which meant that there were plenty of marks for Colette to choose from.

She stole a diamond ring from a wealthy housewife who had cheerfully denounced her neighbors for using forged ration cards.

She lifted a pocket watch from a government functionary who was eagerly working with the Germans to identify unregistered Jews.

She took a necklace from a shopkeeper who informed police about an illegal printing press in the building’s basement, and she slid a signet ring from the finger of a lawyer active in the Parti Populaire Francais, the fascist and antisemitic political party that had eagerly aligned itself with the Germans.

Colette knew her mother didn’t approve of what she was doing, but neither did she turn away when Colette slipped pieces into her hand. She always murmured warnings about their luck running out, but it hadn’t happened yet.

Besides, the underground group Mum was working with was doing the most important job in Paris, and Colette desperately wanted to help.

They had begun in 1940 by distributing a clandestine newspaper urging resistance, but gradually, their purpose had transformed.

Since the mass Jewish roundups in the eleventh arrondissement the previous August, their main focus had become the relocation of Jews to the Free Zone.

Perhaps you and your family should leave Paris , she wrote boldly one day to Tristan. I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to you. I know people who can help you, if you want .

He replied, Never fear, my Isolde. We will be safe.

She had been tempted to leave pieces of jewelry in the wall, too, for safekeeping, but to do so would be to put Tristan in danger, and she couldn’t do that.

Besides, what if he didn’t understand why she felt the need to steal?

No, it was better to use the secret spot only to pass messages, and she and Tristan wrote back and forth nearly every day, leaving scraps of paper for each other in the hiding space.

Sometimes she passed him on the street, but though they held each other’s gazes and exchanged small, secret smiles, they never spoke.

Not only would Colette’s father forbid it, but a flirtation between a Jew and a Gentile could easily land them both in trouble if a German or a collaborator spotted them.

They were just as star-crossed as the original Tristan and Isolde.

It was better to save their deepest thoughts and feelings for paper.

Besides, there was something terribly romantic about an epistolary love affair.

One day , the boy wrote five and a half weeks after they’d first met, I will be able to hold your hand. One day, we will be defined by more than just our religions. One day, all that will matter is that you are you, and I am me, and that will be enough .

That night, as Liliane slept soundly in the bed they shared, Colette sat at her desk, reading the notes the boy had sent her. One needn’t be a poet to express one’s heart , he had said in one of his first missives. I find that saying what you mean is always the best way to proceed.

She took a deep breath. She knew that she was no poet, but mere prose no longer seemed like enough to express how she was beginning to feel.

So she wrote line after line, crossing words out here and there, crumpling pieces of paper when the rhythm didn’t land right, until she settled on four lines that reflected what was in her heart.

Je pense à ce que ca ferait

Avoir ta main dans la mienne.

Un jour nous traverserons ce qui nous divise.

Tu seras mon roi, et moi, ta reine.

I think of what it would feel like , she had written, to have your hand in mine. / One day we will cross that which divides us. / You will be my king, and I, your queen.

She felt bold writing such things, the heroine of her own story at last. She had never had a beau before, but she imagined that this was what it might feel like to fall in love, a slow opening of the heart like cracking a window on a warm spring day to let the sunshine in.

I hope I haven’t been too forward , she added at the bottom of the note , but I think that in times of darkness, we must find a way to be daring, don’t you agree? Your Isolde.

She slipped the poem into the wall the next afternoon, her heart thudding.

The poems and the notes had brought her to life in a way she couldn’t have imagined, filling her with purpose, reminding her that she was valiant and strong and could change the world.

She is a heroine when no one is watching , the boy had written.

His words had lit a fire within her, and she vowed to be the girl the boy believed her to be, someone heroic and courageous.

What would he think when he read her poem?

Would it touch his heart the way his words had touched hers?

They were writing their own love story, and how else could it end but happily ever after?

As her family passed a quiet Bastille Day at home that evening, toasting to the resilience of France, she found herself thinking only of Tristan, and wondering where he was, whether he was safe, and how soon she might hear from him again.