Colonel Warlemont receives a letter from Masha that has been secretly opened and resealed. In it, she claims to be safe at a farm. Shortly after, the Colonel sees Charlotte and observes that she has grown more mature. She recounts an encounter from almost two years ago where a Nazi officer gave her a butter ration after the grocer, Smets, had refused her.

Sometime later, a distraught Harry arrives. He confesses that Masha died in Paris. Masha was part of a resistance line helping an escaped RAF pilot. Amidst fears of an informant within their group, Masha went to a café to meet a contact but sensed a trap. The contact was not who he claimed to be. She was shot while fleeing to a secondary meeting point. Harry, arriving moments late, found her dying as the Gestapo closed in. He says she was dead when they reached her. Devastated, the Colonel listens as Harry asks for a favor: He needs help protecting other RAF pilots coming through Brussels, as their escape line has been compromised. The Colonel agrees.

Writing as a nurse in a series of clinical notes from November 1942, Esther Raphaël documents the horrific injuries of soldiers she treats, including severe burns, shrapnel wounds, and amputations. One young patient proposes to her, arguing in probabilistic terms that marrying him would give his life meaning regardless of outcome. When she refuses, he returns two weeks later with catastrophic new injuries and jokes about her missed opportunity. She kisses him as morphine puts him to sleep.

While treating an RAF pilot for severe burns, Esther asks if he knows her brother, Julian. The boy thinks he may have heard of him. He ultimately loses a foot. Another patient, who crashed in Belgium and was aided by the local resistance, does not know Julian. Her work culminates in a gruesome case where a 24-year-old soldier dies after his legs are amputated. Unable to ask him about her brother in time, Esther retrieves his amputated limbs from the incinerator room to be buried with his body. The relentless trauma leads Esther to decide she no longer believes in God and will never marry. Fearing the news would devastate her parents, she resolves to keep her resolutions secret, making Julian’s survival all the more critical.

Charlotte dreams that Esther’s hair is being shorn like a sheep’s, and they are both crying, breaking their promise not to weep until the war is over. She receives a letter from Mrs. Raphaël mentioning that Julian is in the RAF. Charlotte stores the letter with the movie camera and films under her bed. Soon after, the Colonel visits and informs Charlotte and Francois that Masha is dead. The shock causes Charlotte to experience a severe migraine with visual distortions.

Later that night, unable to sleep, Charlotte looks out her window and sees a mystical lioness in the square below. The creature is still there in the morning, and she watches a car pass directly through it unharmed. The vision remains her secret. Thinking of Philippe and their one meeting in Antwerp, she wraps a pair of his trousers around her pillow for comfort. She resolves to soon tell her father that she is pregnant.

Narrating from beyond the grave, Masha recounts the day of her death in Paris. She was on a mission to escort a young RAF pilot, posing as his lover while meeting a “shuttle,” or contact. She wore a conspicuous camel-hair coat she had made herself, with a tailoring suggestion from Charlotte. Masha immediately suspected the shuttle was an impostor; his accent was wrong, he fumbled with local currency, and she saw he was hiding a missing fingertip. She realized he was a Flemish collaborator, rather than a Canadian ally.

When she knew her cover was blown, she left the café, hoping the pilot had already escaped through a basement exit as planned. Masha was shot in the neck as she fled. Bleeding heavily, she stumbled to the emergency rendezvous point, where Harry arrived late. As Harry held a dying Masha and other footsteps approached, she felt the cold barrel of a gun against her head. From the afterlife, she reflects on her murder, uncertain of who pulled the trigger or why: whether it was to spare her from torture, to protect the resistance, or for some other reason. She also reveals that she and Harry never married because he wanted children and she did not, citing the impossibility of raising a child amid war and starvation.

Miss Hobert watches Charlotte give a handmade wool hat to the local newsboy and feels slighted. Later, in the building’s lobby, she sees the notary, Everard, with an unknown Flemish man. She complains to her neighbor Dirk DeBaerre about Charlotte not making her a hat. Hobert is also agitated by the Colonel, who has taken in several men who are deaf into his apartment. She suspects he is receiving money for housing them.

The Colonel later asks to borrow some of Hobert’s puzzles for the men. Annoyed, she gives him two puzzles that are each missing a piece. Feeling a mix of guilt and spite, she goes to Charlotte’s apartment the next day and commissions a small, stylish cap from her. Charlotte measures her head and recommends a “winter sky” blue cashmere fabric. Hobert agrees but insists she will only pay the full amount after a final fitting, demonstrating her distrust.

After Miss Hobert commissions a hat from Charlotte, she warns Francois to be wary of the Colonel and his new tenants. Francois dismisses her. Later, the Colonel visits for a beer and explains that he is housing the men because his late wife was devoted to their cause; their previous home had burned down. He also notes with pride that the men are making new pieces for the incomplete puzzles Hobert gave him.

While they talk, Francois puts on music, and he and Charlotte share a spontaneous dance. The Colonel then mentions that RAF bombing missions are getting closer to Brussels, a remark that unnerves Francois, who suspects his son-in-law Philippe is involved in something related to the anti-German resistance. After the Colonel leaves, Francois recalls telling a young Charlotte a story inspired by the Raphaëls’ Monet painting. He then retreats to his sketchbook, where he defies the occupation by designing fantastical, nonlinear buildings he knows will never be built.

Charlotte struggles to read Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, finding its fragmented style difficult. She grows increasingly worried about her father’s detached calm and his total absorption in his architectural drawings. 

After finishing Miss Hobert’s hat, she delivers it to her. The hat is a triumph, transforming Hobert’s appearance. Though visibly pleased, Hobert remains dismissive. As she pays Charlotte in the hallway, Dirk DeBaerre appears. Impressed, Dirk immediately commissions a hat for himself.

Charlotte reluctantly agrees and has Dirk follow her upstairs for a fitting. She finds the process of measuring his head strangely intimate. While preparing the wool for his hat, she imagines it on Philippe or Julian instead. The thought leads her to remember a day from her childhood when she confessed that she had colorblindness to Julian, and he accepted it without question. She realizes that with Julian, she feels both perfectly alone and perfectly complete.

Dirk, an observer by nature, clears out his deceased mother’s hoarded possessions. To maintain his cover as a collaborator and gather intelligence, he attends meetings of the VNV, the Flemish nationalist group. His long-standing presence there has made him appear trustworthy, deflecting any suspicion about his parents’ deaths. He learns from Miss Hobert that her tenant near the Gare du Midi is a man named Putzeis, whom Dirk recognizes from the VNV meetings. Suspicious of Putzeis’s unexplained wealth, Dirk begins to follow him.

After seeing Putzeis picked up by a mysterious car, Dirk borrows Hobert’s vehicle to continue his surveillance. He follows Putzeis and observes him deliver three men to a train station where Gestapo agents are waiting. Dirk infers that Putzeis is informing on what appear to be Allied airmen being moved through an escape network. Dirk leaves before the arrests. Later, Hobert tells him a new tenant has moved in and that the notary, Everard, received a bonus for telling authorities the Raphaëls’ valuable art may be hidden in their former apartment. Dirk also confirms his suspicion that the notary’s wife, Annick, is reading the residents’ mail.