Lieve is a Belgian woman who marries just as World War II is beginning. When the Germans invade, her husband goes off to fight them, but he swiftly returns home after the invasion succeeds. Later, he decides that the Germans are on the right side of things, and goes off to fight for them on the Eastern Front. Soon afterward, a resistance fighter is stranded on her doorway, and she hides him. The two of them fall in love, and the conflicts and joys of this relationship cause Lieve continued grief well after the end of the war.

Louise lives alone and seems to like it that way. She has been through a divorce and the recent death of her mother. Recently, she has moved to Annecy, a moderate-sized city, to take work as a schoolteacher. She encounters a much younger man, Luigi, an Italian who is down on his luck. Though he moved to France to find work, he was robbed of his money and papers and is stranded. When he helps her bury her dogs, which her neighbour has poisoned for barking, their relationship grows to a new level.