Susan's baby is saved, but Susan drifts into mental isolation. Mildred returns Barbie's gift of spoons, and Barbie decides to present them to the Officer's mess. She arrives at the Adjutant's house in a downpour and, hearing strange sounds, she forces her way in. There she finds Mildred and the Adjutant making love. Barbie has now left Rose Cottage, but she returns to fetch a trunk, and finds Ronald Merrick on the verandah, looking for the Laytons. He tells her that Edwina Crane has left a suicide note saying 'There is no god, not even on the road from Dibrapur.' Barbie is shattered - she has just been offered a job at the Infants' School in Dibrapur. She sets off in a rickshaw - but on the way down the steep hill the runners lose control and rickshaw is overturned. Months later Sarah finds her, distraught, in Ranpur mission hospital. Outside her window the vultures circle the towers of silence where the Parsees expose their dead.
