Pascal gives Sadie a tour of Le Moulin, an eleven-hectare commune housing about forty-five members who reject record-keeping and digital surveillance. He describes their agricultural projects—a quince orchard replacing a failed Christmas tree farm, walnut oil production, preserves sold at market—and explains that income and state assistance checks are pooled. Pascal references Lacombe's (Bruno's) opposition to tractors as ecological philosophy, apparently unaware that Bruno's rejection stems from the tractor accident that killed his child.

At the woodshop, Sadie meets Burdmoore, an American in his seventies with a New York accent who has lived at the commune three years without learning French. Burdmoore recounts his radical underground past in 1960s New York, parallel to Jean's underground activity in Paris, and how Jean recruited him to Vantôme after his French girlfriend died. René, a wolfish Frenchman, runs the shop and complains in French about Burdmoore's incompetence, assuming neither Sadie nor Burdmoore understands.

The communal kitchen and crèche reveal the commune's contradictions. Sadie observes mothers smoking and gossiping while ignoring their children—one boy gets sand in his eyes, a toddler cries with food on his face, a girl masturbates absent-mindedly on a swing. Pascal lectures about collective childcare and quotes Zones of Incivility on alienated children and American school shootings. Sadie notes Pascal himself is raising none of his children, and that despite his rhetoric, only women perform childcare. Pascal concedes the gendered division of labor reasserts itself.

Touring the walnut oil operation, Sadie grows overwhelmed by the heat and tunes Pascal out. Walking back through the walnut grove, she notices Pascal refers to Bruno only as "Lacombe," treating him as an abstract authority rather than a living man. Recalling Bruno's writing about walnut trees as places to daydream, Sadie realizes Bruno has insinuated himself into her thoughts. The leaves begin vibrating and her vision fragments—she is having another ocular migraine, which she experiences as Bruno's uncanny presence in the orchard.