Bastiaan looks for Peggy and relaxes when she is near. Peggy realizes that Lotte feels comfortable with Maude’s direct ways, and she feels a bit of envy at that rapport. She remembers watching the two of them walk away from her in the Covered Market, and it reminds her of how Ma had walked like that with Maude. Peggy sometimes felt left out of the bond that Maude and Ma shared.

Peggy invites Gwen to join them for dinner, which Lotte has cooked. When Gwen says she wants to get her degree so she can “engage in the debate” (183), Lotte answers that it is all “ashes.” Gwen wonders what else Lotte has lost besides her library; she thinks Lotte needs someone to mother, and has chosen Maude.

Jack visits on leave. He is assigned to a platoon under Mr. Owen. Peggy gives him a roll of toilet paper as a parting gift. Tilda writes that she has been assigned to nurse German prisoners and work with their doctor, Hugo, who is also a German.

The dressings on Bastiaan’s face are removed, and Peggy is disturbed by the sight of the ruined skin and missing eye. She tries to discard a vase of wilting flowers, but he won’t let her. Peggy is ashamed of herself. Lotte says that Bastiaan is still living, and again she weeps. Peggy apologizes to Bastiaan, reminding him that she was simply shocked. She insists on throwing away the dead flowers.

As they walk one afternoon, Bastiaan tells her he was studying to be an architect in Brussels. He asks about Peggy’s father. She remembers that he was Gown, and Ma said he was writing a treatise on her least favorite Greek.

Bastiaan is ready to be discharged. He wears a mask that covers the scarred part of his face. He says it is to spare people from “[t]he discomfort of looking at the mess the war has made” (197). He has a job teaching French at the Clarendon Institute and lodgings not far from where Peggy lives. Peggy continues her hospital work, but then one officer complains that she isn’t fit to write his letters. Peggy doesn’t go back. Lou at the Press suggests Peggy can help tend the communal vegetable garden.

Tilda writes Rosie to say that Jack has been injured and is at her hospital. He will survive, but his lieutenant was killed. Peggy is shocked to think of Mr. Owen dead. She thinks about Women’s Words and his marriage and wonders if his wife knows yet. Later, Mrs. Stoddard, at the request of Mr. Hart, asks if Peggy would like to help print more copies of Women’s Words. Peggy sees the flyleaf that was for Esme, the inscription “Love, Eternal” in Baskerville typeface (202), and rips it out of every volume so Esme’s copy of the book will remain unique.

Peggy begins meeting Bastiaan for lunch occasionally, and the bindery girls tease her that he is her sweetheart. Peggy looks forward to their time together. She thinks of his scars as “his war face” (206).

When Bastiaan takes her to St. Sepulchre’s Cemetery, though, Peggy balks. Ma died five years ago and is buried in this cemetery. Peggy recalls the burial, but she hasn’t visited her mother’s grave since. She couldn’t stand to witness her mother’s last moments, and she feels ashamed about that now. Bastiaan sits on the sarcophagus of Madame Wood, whom he claims doesn’t mind. They kiss.

At the Press, two of the Belgian refugee women leave, and Aggie goes to work in the munitions factory, where the pay is better, and she will get to wear overalls.

Peggy is self-conscious as she walks toward Bastiaan to meet one day. A passerby notices his scars, but Bastiaan is watching Peggy. She feels she is drifting from Maude and has the impulse to look back to see if Maude is nearby. Then she thinks, “I desperately wanted whatever this was. I wanted to lose myself, to be lost to her” (213).

Bastiaan takes Peggy to his room in the basement of one of the grand houses on St. Margaret’s Street. They sit together, and Peggy touches him, thinking how handsome he must have been before the war. He tells her that when he was blind and numb, she made him feel familiar. They make love, and Peggy wakes to find Bastiaan holding his hand over her heart, making sure she is alive.

Peggy returns to Calliope to find it dark. She puts away Maude’s dirty dishes and, for a moment, doesn’t recognize her reflection in the window. Maude is in bed wearing Tilda’s red lipstick, smudged. Peggy makes tea and contemplates her books, thinking about Ma and the stories she read to them.

When Peggy climbs into bed, Maude smells like tobacco. The next morning, she sees that Maude had fallen asleep wearing Tilda’s apricot dress. She calls it a “[p]retty dress, for a pretty parrot” (220), and Peggy doesn’t recognize those words.

Peggy is gathering sections with Lotte and hands them to Maude. When she leans to kiss Maude on the cheek, Maude turns her head and kisses Peggy on the lips, then asks, “Not so bad?” (222). They notice they are printing the book of German verse, and Lotte translates one of the poems. Lotte says that the German people are not her enemy, but language can be used like a weapon.

Peggy learns later that Maude made extra folds on a section, so she takes it home. She sends them to Tilda for her German doctor to translate. Tilda replies. He recognized the poet, Liliencron, writing about a different war. Tilda is upset by the thought of the things they have in common with the Germans.

As Peggy walks home one evening with Bastiaan, they pass a group of working men by the bridge. One greets Peggy and calls her a “pretty parrot.” She demands to know what he did to Maude, and he protests that he did nothing.

Lotte is with Maude and tells Peggy that something has happened. Peggy feels ashamed about what she sees as her neglect, and about Bastiaan seeing Calliope. Lotte scolds Peggy for leaving Maude, but then screams, “Why did you leave him?” (233) and breaks down into sobs. Bastiaan soothes her, speaking French, and walks her home. Peggy asks Maude not to meet the man at Hythe Bridge again.

Bastiaan tells Peggy that Lotte had a boy who was like Maude, who communicated mostly with signs and small rhymes. Lotte has not recovered from losing him during the attack on Louvain. Bastiaan saw the bodies after the massacre, and they haunt him. Lotte feels guilty because she left her son to try to save the illuminated manuscripts at the library; the manuscripts were burned, and her son was killed. Peggy wonders how Lotte can bear it.

Maude and Peggy dress up and dance at a fundraiser for the Institute. They help at the vegetable garden. Bastiaan gets a new roommate, Milan, who is part of the group that fled Serbia over the Albanian mountains.

Peggy and Bastiaan picnic at the cemetery, and Bastiaan explains that he is trying to use St. Sepulchre’s to bury his dead, one by one, and be free of the nightmares. Tilda writes that the Germans she nurses dream of their dead, too.