At table, Roberval dictates that the secretary record in the log that four men were hanged for brawling and buried at sea. As the secretary writes, Marguerite silently burns with questions about his past, unable to sleep that night.

Before dawn, Marguerite dresses quietly, telling Damienne she feels unwell and needs air. She climbs to the deck, which is shrouded in thick fog so dense it seems to erase the lower halves of bodies. She finds the secretary at the rail and, denying to herself the meaning of the meeting, approaches him and asks him to continue his story.

The secretary recounts being a poor apprentice who ruined a kidskin and was savagely beaten by his master. He resolved to flee, escaping under a harvest moon and walking alone with little food to La Rochelle. Hiding in a stable on market day, he was discovered by Roberval's stablemaster, who refused him work—but the cook, desperate for a missing errand boy, took him on.

One day in the kitchen, the steward's pen broke. The secretary boldly offered to mend it, revealing his father had taught him. Asked to write the Our Father, he produced such a fine hand that the steward, calling him a beggar, brought him upstairs to copy. He rose to undersecretary and then secretary, favored by Roberval with clothes and a place at his table, accompanying him to Périgord—where he first saw Marguerite in olive green.

The secretary confesses he has loved Marguerite since childhood, recalling specific moments: her oversized ring, her boldness asking for money, her arrival in the city, her receiving Psalms from Roberval, her virginal practice, and her failed scheming letter, which Roberval read and laughed at. Marguerite touches his hand; he urges her to go before she is missed, though he does not pull away. She finally returns below, slipping past a watchful Damienne into her cabinet, and falls into bed exhilarated.