In the evening they attend a banquet celebration honoring one of Denmark’s most gifted poets, the fifty-year-old, Gabriel Lidman (Ebbe Rode), who was Gertrud’s lover before she dumped him to marry Gustav. She hasn’t seen him for three years, as he’s been living in Rome. Gustav is one of the featured speakers praising the poet. During his speech Gertrud becomes faint and is attended to in the adjacent waiting room by a Danish professor/writer friend Axel Nygen (Axel Strøbye), who is living in Paris studying free will. When the ceremony is over her husband and the poet come to comfort her, but the Vice-Chancellor calls Gustav into meet with him. This gives Gabriel a chance to tell how he met Erland at a prior reception given by a courtesan, a reception Erland promised Gertrud he would not attend, and the reckless drunken young man, with everyone present, bragged of his latest conquest, tastelessly dragging Gertrud’s name through the mud. Gabriel, in tears, then mentions that he only came home because he missed her love and wishes they could resume being lovers. But she rejects his offer. Gustav then returns from his meeting to announce he got the appointment and the Vice-Chancellor requests Gertrud sing an opera song with Erland accompanying her. But she faints in the middle of a song about anger. In the park the next day Gertrud then sees her young lover again and offers to support him if he lives with her, but he tells her he already has an older pregnant ladyfriend supporting him and asks her to continue their illicit affair instead–which she rejects. At home, her hubby invited the poet over and they drink a toast. When alone with Gertrud, Gabriel asks why she rejected him and she tells him that her love for him died when she was cleaning up his apartment and discovered a scrap of paper saying “A woman’s love and a man’s work are mortal enemies.” That gave away his true feelings about love, which exposed him as a poser of love even though he’s earned his rep as a sincere romantic poet. With that, the world-weary poet departs from her life for good. Then her inconsolable hubby can’t resist asking if she ever loved him, and all she can respond with is “that it was something resembling love.” Which prompts him to shout out that he “never wants to see her again.” The rejected Gertrud then goes to join Axel with his university friends doing psychological research in Paris. We next see her as a white-haired recluse some forty years later and an elderly Axel visiting in her sparse country house in Denmark, where he presents her with a book on Racine that he has written and commiserates that they were close friends but never lovers. She mentions that she has no regrets about her life, and gives him back his love letters–which he promptly burns in the fireplace.