Ettie stands in the hall with a letter and a crate of champagne from Raimondi. As Tartuffe and Joseph approach, she reveals Raimondi’s news: The article Joseph wrote led to a quick and profitable sale of the painting Young Man with Orange to a London buyer. Inside the letter is a large check and a note from Raimondi advising, “Keep the vulture around. He is good for business” (115). Ettie strategically shows her uncle the check and then reads Raimondi’s note aloud. Impressed by the money, Tartuffe gruffly tells a delighted Joseph that he can stay.

Several days later, Joseph receives the published edition of his article, “Dispatches from the Studio.” He proudly shows it to Ettie, who reads it and observes that he makes Tartuffe sound like a god. Joseph also gets a letter from his sister. Flora writes that their father secretly reads his articles and gives a painful update on their brother, Rupert, who is in a hospital suffering from severe shell shock and has attempted to die by suicide.

The letter prompts Joseph to recall a visit to Rupert after the war. He was horrified to find his once-vivid brother a hollowed-out, unresponsive shell of a man. Their father treated Rupert’s condition with a frustratingly cheerful dismissiveness. Joseph also remembers a later incident when he and Flora took Rupert to a park. A child’s ball thrown nearby triggered a psychological crisis in Rupert, who had to be sedated by nurses.

While preparing the studio for Tartuffe’s next major work, Ettie feels a sting of resentment that Joseph’s article failed to mention her essential role in supporting Tartuffe’s work. She remembers her childhood attempts to gain her uncle’s artistic approval by leaving her drawings for him to find. He always ignored them until, at age 12, she produced a drawing of daisies that showed a technique similar to his own. In a rage, he tore the drawing to pieces. He grabbed her wrist and furiously warned her, “There is only one artist in this house […] And it will never be you” (128). He also told her the Académie, the famed school of art where he trained, only permitted men to study there. After that day, Ettie hid her artistic desires, letting Tartuffe believe he had crushed her ambition.

Joseph is permitted to stay in the studio and observe Tartuffe at work. His happiness is marred by a persistent, troubling memory of the night Young Man with Orange was finished. He confronts Ettie with this vision, asking how a painting destroyed by fire could be perfectly whole the next day. Ettie calmly dismisses his memory, attributing it to a fever brought on by heat and absinthe. She holds his face and tells him, “You saw nothing,” leaving him to question his own sanity.

A description of Ettie’s room reveals hidden items, including art supplies and a list of names. This list dates back to her childhood after her mother’s death, when she became determined to find out who her father was. At age eight, she began methodically observing every man in the village, creating a list of suspects. She looked for family resemblances and considered motives, but her direct questions were met with angry dismissals. She never identified her father, and the list remains hidden and unfinished.

As July continues, a connection grows between Joseph and Ettie, who now exchange meaningful glances. While observing Tartuffe paint, Joseph is given an original preparatory sketch to send with his next article. He secretly addresses the envelope to his brother instead.

Later, Joseph and Ettie discuss Rupert’s copy of The Odyssey. She’s been told that the only two stories are of a man going on a journey or a stranger coming to town, while a woman’s story is to stay home.

Joseph’s idyllic routine is shattered when Tartuffe forces him to kill a chicken for dinner. The violent act leaves him shaken and spattered with blood. Ettie finds him in his room, distraught, and leads him to a nearby river. She gently washes the blood from his shirt and then from his body. The intimate moment is broken when Tartuffe calls for her. For the next few days, Ettie avoids him completely.

Ettie finds herself acutely aware of Joseph’s presence. She reflects on her life, which has been devoid of physical affection. She knows she must hide her feelings, as Tartuffe has always destroyed anything that brings her happiness. A flashback reveals that after Tartuffe forbade her from making art, she began painting secretly at night. She scavenged his discarded materials and later, when put in charge of supplies, ordered duplicates for herself. Painting became her private escape from the man who trapped her out of his fear of a life where she was not there to serve his every need.

Joseph receives a letter from Flora saying that the sketch he sent had a powerfully calming effect on Rupert. Moved, Joseph begins to regularly sneak more of Tartuffe’s preparatory drawings to send to his brother. He sees a poster for a village dance and impulsively asks Ettie to go with him. She agrees to meet him in the village square.

That evening, Joseph waits for her for hours. Feeling dejected and embarrassed, he drinks multiple glasses of punch. A woman named Sabine repeatedly asks him to dance. Eventually, Sabine persuades Joseph to dance with her. When she kisses him against his will, he recoils and sees Ettie, who has just arrived.

Seeing Joseph kissing another woman, Ettie flees the village square. Joseph pursues her. Tartuffe intentionally delayed her departure for the dance with meaningless chores. She runs to the stream, and he catches up, apologizing profusely. In the tense silence, she asks why he didn’t wait for her, and he asks why she was so late. Leaving the questions unanswered, Ettie closes the distance between them and kisses him.

Inwardly, Joseph notes that Ettie tastes like peaches, lavender, and “being alive.”

As Ettie and Joseph kiss by the stream, fireworks from the village festival light up the sky. They hold each other and dance slowly without music. The moment feels suspended in time. When Ettie touches Joseph’s neck, a fleeting memory of the sterile, death-filled hospital intrudes, but she pushes it away, focusing on the powerful feeling of his living presence.

The morning after the kiss, Joseph is overwhelmed by a mixture of desire for Ettie and fear of Tartuffe’s wrath. If their relationship were discovered, he feels certain Tartuffe would throw him out immediately. He resolves to suppress his feelings, treat the kiss as another unreal nighttime event, and focus solely on his work.

Ettie also feels conflicted and vulnerable after the kiss. She is plagued by dark thoughts and traumatic memories from her time working in a hospital during the war, recalling violent dreams and the horrific sights of dying soldiers. She is terrified of letting someone get close, haunted by the memory of a past relationship and “a life she almost had” (167).

Joseph and Ettie enter into a silent agreement to avoid each other. One evening, Tartuffe initiates a rare, intimate conversation with Joseph. He advises that a true artist needs silence and must beware of women, who he claims are a distraction. The conversation turns to Ettie’s mother, whom Tartuffe viciously slanders for getting pregnant out of wedlock and later abandoning Ettie to run away to America with another man. Tartuffe reveals his sister, Gabrielle, and her unborn child died in an American hospital. Shaken by Tartuffe’s cruelty, Joseph feels a desperate urge to comfort Ettie. He goes to her door but loses his nerve, fearing Tartuffe is testing him.

In her room, Ettie anxiously awaits a visit from Raimondi, Tartuffe’s art dealer. The dread triggers a memory from when she was 15. Hoping for recognition, she showed Raimondi her secret, abstract paintings, which expressed her feelings of being trapped. Raimondi brutally dismissed her art as worthless, made a sexual advance, and, when rejected, grew cruel. He claims that Tartuffe had sacrificed his successful Paris career to protect his sister, Gabrielle, after she became pregnant by a married man, and that it was because of Ettie and her mother that Tartuffe’s career was dimmed.

Over the years, Ettie has pieced together the rest of the story: Her mother, feeling trapped in their exile, eventually met a man who offered her escape to Brooklyn, but only if she left her seven-year-old daughter behind. Gabrielle chose to leave, abandoning Ettie with a doll and a false promise to return.

Joseph receives a letter from Harry announcing the imminent and uninvited arrival of four American artists. Fearing Tartuffe’s reaction, Joseph is shocked when the old painter, instead of getting angry, demands a visually elaborate feast so he can paint the scene. Joseph and Ettie work together to prepare the meal, carefully selecting foods with vivid colors and interesting shapes.

The of the American artists, Scott, Ambrose, Morgan, arrive and prove to be loud, entitled, and boorish. The three largely ignore Peggy Guggenheim, the only woman in their group. During the chaotic dinner, Tartuffe remains amused, sketching the unfolding scene. The evening devolves into a heated argument when Peggy challenges Tartuffe and the men on why there are so few famous women artists, a point Joseph supports. Tartuffe ends the argument by picking up Ettie’s hazelnut tart and throwing it against the Corot landscape on the wall. As the guests depart, Peggy reveals her full name is Peggy Guggenheim and leaves her card for Tartuffe, asking Ettie to pass it on if he ever changes his mind about selling.

Tartuffe begins a frenzied new painting, The Feast, using the decaying leftovers from the dinner party. Meanwhile, Ettie rides her bicycle to a hill overlooking Avignon and contemplates the card Peggy gave her and reflects on a major revelation from the dinner party: Peggy informed her that, contrary to what Tartuffe had always told her, women have been admitted to the Académie des Beaux-Arts for years. This new knowledge shatters Ettie’s world. She realizes Tartuffe has deliberately manipulated her and kept her ignorant to ensure she would never leave. She re-evaluates their relationship, recognizing that the great artist is completely dependent on her for his work and survival. She also recalls a night after a failed escape attempt when she was 14. Tartuffe, drunk and crying, begged her never to leave him, calling her by her mother’s name, Gabrielle.

When Ettie returns home late, Tartuffe aggressively interrogates her and smashes a jar of honey. The confrontation, coupled with her new understanding of his deceit, solidifies her resolve. She decides she wants to escape, experience the world, and pursue a relationship with Joseph.

Ettie leaves a note for Joseph that reads, “I burn for you” (220). He fears her uncle might see the message, but Ettie reveals Tartuffe cannot read. This revelation makes Joseph realize that Ettie is the one who answered his letter and invited him to the house because she knew Tartuffe would have refused. She explains she sensed a longing in his letter, and he admits he came hoping to feel alive again after his mother’s death and his brother’s hospitalization. They share an intense kiss in the pantry.

A few nights later, unable to bear their separation, Joseph goes to Ettie’s room. He finds it empty. A note on her bed reads, “I want you to see me” (224). Interpreting this as a clue, he goes to the outbuilding. Peeking through a window, he sees Tartuffe’s Lobster on a Silver Platter besides Ettie’s own copy of it, which is identical. Ettie stands before the twin canvases with a paintbrush in her hand.