Perdu and Catherine cook dinner in Catherine’s apartment. Conversation comes easily, and Perdu is surprised to realize that he feels safe and relaxed in her presence. Catherine tells Perdu that she was a sculptor before her marriage and that she’s hoping she’ll be able to pick that back up. Perdu confesses that he’s afraid to open Manon’s letter.

Catherine and Perdu embrace, both enjoying feeling the touch of another person after long periods of loneliness. Before kissing Catherine or moving their intimacy further, Perdu stops. He senses that Catherine isn’t ready yet. Perdu holds Catherine while she cries and talks about her divorce. After she falls asleep, he opens Manon’s 21-year-old letter.

Manon’s letter reveals that she left Perdu because she was dying and because she thought her death would be less painful for him if he were mad at her. “But I was wrong,” she writes (82). She asks Perdu to come see her at her family’s home in southern France so that she can tell him everything before she dies.

Perdu feels extreme shame and grief after reading Manon’s letter. He worries that she must have thought he didn’t love her enough to come. In reality, he had been too angry to read the letter, so he’d never gotten the message.