Daniel convinces himself the midnight sighting of the limping smoker was coincidence and arrives at Gustavo Barceló’s Plaza Real apartment to begin reading to Clara. Guided by the maid Bernarda through Barceló’s lavish, plant-filled home, Daniel finds Clara playing the piano. After tea, Clara asks Daniel to start The Shadow of the Wind from the beginning, and Daniel discovers new rhythms and details in Carax’s prose as he reads aloud for an hour.

Clara invites Daniel back, and the arrangement becomes nearly daily through the summer of 1945 and the years that follow, except when Clara has music lessons with the promising composer Adrián Neri. After finishing Carax’s novel, Daniel and Clara move through Barceló’s library, and often spend afternoons simply talking or walking Barcelona together, with Clara asking Daniel to describe what she cannot see. Their intimacy grows, even as strangers sometimes misread their relationship and mock them.

Clara also unsettles Daniel with “secrets” about a hoarse-voiced stranger who approaches her when she is alone, asks questions about Barceló and Daniel, and once stroked her throat. Clara says she tried to feel the stranger’s face and sensed something like leather, “as if he wore a leather mask.” Daniel doubts her but is tormented by jealousy and fear, while recognizing his devotion to Clara is increasingly painful and obsessive.

As Daniel becomes a fixture in the household, Bernarda grows maternal toward him and warns him not to become too obsessed with Clara. The narration reveals Bernarda’s harsh past and how Barceló took her in, shaping her into a competent, loyal servant; despite her piety and melodramatic crises, she cares for Daniel by mending his clothes and fussing over his health. Barceló tolerates Daniel’s presence and repeatedly hints that Carax’s book could be worth a fortune, but Daniel continues to refuse selling it.

At home, Daniel’s father disapproves of Daniel spending so much time with an older woman and of neglecting his friend Tomás Aguilar and the bookshop. The conflict sharpens when Daniel’s father discovers Daniel has given Clara Carax’s novel, which Daniel dismisses as a childish pact while his father treats it as a serious responsibility. As warnings from his father, Bernarda, and even Barceló sink in, Daniel realizes he is trapped in an impossible longing; when Clara tries to address it directly, Daniel repeatedly flees, sensing his troubles are only beginning.