Content Warning: The source material for this section includes representations of gender-based harassment and racial violence. It also includes outdated, offensive terms for Chinese people.

Ramy, Victoire, Letty, and Robin are stressed out as they prepare for end-of-year exams. Tensions between Letty and Victoire and Letty and Ramy add to the strain. Robin even hallucinates seeing Anthony Ribben one day in town.

Robin and Ramy are studying for exams when they come across a brilliant match-pair made by Eveline (Evie) Brooke. Evie was a Babel student who studied in the same year as Sterling Jones, Anthony, and Griffin. Evie was such an important student that Professor Playfair has a desk in his classroom with her books and name on it, and no one is allowed to sit at it. Despite her achievements, she disappears from the records after 1833.

All four of the cohort members pass their exams. In the moment when they all receive the good news and celebrate with each other, Robin wishes he could preserve this “golden afternoon” (236) in something better and warmer than silver. Doing so isn’t possible, though.