There are so many things I love about this piece, not least of which is Wharton's appreciation for Paris in the winter. People keep asking why on earth I want to go in February, and all I can say is:

1) Because nobody else seems to want to.

2) I like to see the bones of a place. And I think cities show their true character in gray (as do travelers).

Anyhow, that Edith Wharton was no dum-dum:

LIKE many of the characters in her novels, Edith Wharton made frequent use of concealment, reserve and deception in her own life.

So it was fitting that the leading American female writer of the early 20th century experienced her first and most likely only passionate love affair in the city of Paris, far removed from her homes in New York and New England.

The pleasure she found in Paris in the years before World War I became a cover for the pleasure she took from the clandestine relationship with Morton Fullerton, a handsome, Frenchified, well-read American cad who worked as Paris correspondent for The Times of London.

“I am sunk in the usual demoralizing happiness which this atmosphere produces in me,” Wharton wrote in a letter at the end of 1907. She added, “The tranquil majesty of the architectural lines, the wonderful blurred winter lights, the long lines of lamps garlanding the avenues & the quays — je l’ai dans mon sang!” (“I have it in my blood!”)