On the train back to Connecticut, Esther wears a blouse and skirt of Betsy’s. She has not washed Marco’s blood off of her face, thinking that the streaks look “touching, and rather spectacular” (113). Her mother is waiting at the station, and as they get into the car, she tells Esther that Esther was rejected from the writing course. Although Esther expected this result, she is upset. Throughout her miserable time in New York, the prospect of the writing course had kept her going. Now she will have to spend her summer in the suburbs.

Back in her small clapboard house, a bored Esther observes the neighbors from her window. She observes a heavily pregnant woman named Dodo Conway smiling as she pushes a baby carriage down the street with several children in tow. Dodo Conway is a married Catholic whose growing family both fascinates and repulses Esther.

Esther’s old friend Jody calls her from Cambridge to ask when Esther will be moving in with her. Esther tells her she will not be coming to Cambridge after all, having been rejected from the writing course. Jody tells her to come anyway and take a different course, but Esther hears a “hollow voice” insisting that Jody let another girl take her place.