- Tomas is a doctor.
- Two days after his standing-at-the-window crisis, Tereza calls his hospital and tells him she is at the train station. He is overjoyed.
- They make plans to meet the next day.
- When they meet, Tereza is carrying a copy of Anna Karenina and has left her suitcase at the train station. She says she's come to Prague to find a job.
- Tomas quickly realizes that Tereza's life is in her suitcase, and that she's there to offer up her life to him. He finds the suitcase to be very heavy.
- To Tomas's surprise, he takes Tereza home with him. This is against his principles.
- Since he divorced his wife ten years ago, he's been the ultimate bachelor. He's designed his entire life in such a way that no woman could ever move in with him. And though he has sex with many women, he refuses to sleep next to them afterwards.
- Yet he and Tereza sleep together side by side, holding hands all night long.
- Again Tomas thinks of her as a child placed in a basket and sent down the river to him. He feels as though it's his responsibility to take care of her, just as the Pharaoh's daughter took care of Moses.
- "Tomas did not realize," says the narrator, "that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love" (1.4.12).