The chapter opens on a bustling final day at the Avallon as diplomats prepare for repatriation. June Hudson rises before dawn in her staff cottage, tends to her dachshunds, and assesses the sweetwater, which appears unchanged despite the prior night’s disturbance. She surveys the hotel’s intense departure logistics: packaging purchases, early checkouts, final meals to prevent waste, and luggage transfers to the guarded station, all against a spring-bright backdrop that underscores her past love for the hotel.

June visits the storage room where Sebastian Hepp is being held under lock; with Hugh Calloway present, she gives Sebastian a folded paper airplane and informs him she has secured attorney Dennis Hinkman. She then approaches Sabine Wolfe in the breakfast room, exchanging guarded words under the pretense of discussing the menu, signaling ongoing plans and scrutiny, and reminding June she must decide whether to act on Hannelore Wolfe’s fate before time runs out.

In her office, Edgar Gilfoyle arrives, immaculately dressed and agitated, insisting on an immediate conversation. Despite June’s workload, Edgar blurts a marriage proposal loud enough to carry, urging June to stop prioritizing work and implying their union is inevitable. June recalls a pivotal New York trip years earlier: lavish parties and backstage hotel tutelage contrasted with a clandestine kitchen dance with Edgar, which culminated in Mr. Francis angrily warning Edgar not to toy with June and declaring June the Avallon’s future general manager.

The flashback crystallizes June’s long-standing realization that she was valued for her competence but not accepted as a Gilfoyle. She fled New York heartbroken and found solace speaking through the cracked door with the mysterious occupant of room 411. Back in the present, Griff Clemons briefly interrupts, offering June an escape; Edgar brusquely dismisses him, prompting June to note she would not address staff that way.

Edgar presses for an answer. June says no, a firm refusal. Edgar pleads that marriage would quell rumors that he bought out of the draft and relieve the pressure of not serving, while promising June the hotel and noninterference in her work. June coolly recognizes his motives, and when Edgar adds it would also dispel accusations that she is a gold digger, she reiterates that she will not marry him.

June states she does not love Edgar and that there is someone else, reflecting on Tucker Minnick’s preference for her true self. She tells Edgar that had he asked in New York, things might have been different, but she now has no regrets about the path that led her here. Edgar insists there is still time; June ends the conversation, asking him to shut the door behind him, internally aligning herself toward decisive action about Hannelore and away from Edgar’s solution.