The narrator recounts how, after meeting Lucien in the Paris bar, they walked together to the Place des Vosges and lay side by side on the grass. Lucien pointed out Victor Hugo's former residence and let his arm touch hers. She deliberately allowed him to believe he was leading every move, responding with calculated, prim hesitancy to keep him feeling in control.

Lucien kissed her, first tentatively, then with more passion. The narrator observes him constructing a romantic, fated narrative around their meeting, the kind of retrospective myth-making people use to render random events meaningful. She reflects on Ecclesiastes and the human tendency to read justice and destiny into mere chance, noting that this self-mythologizing is precisely what makes the cold bump so effective: Lucien believes he summoned her by heart and deserves her as a reward for his good breeding.

As Lucien describes Victor Hugo hearing voices in the waves while exiled on Guernsey, the narrator hears her own internal voice declaring that Lucien is "a done deal"—an affair perhaps tied, indirectly, to the future of France. The chapter closes with a time jump: three months later, she and Lucien are living together, confirming the success of her infiltration.