Meanwhile, as her son is away with Felsenburgh, Mrs. Brand takes a sudden turn for the worse. Ignoring Mabel's sermons about how Christianity has divided the human race and caused nothing but terrible violence, Mrs. Brand pleads for Father Franklin to be summoned. When Oliver returns home that day, a weeping Mabel informs him that his mother died an hour before. Clutching her rosary, Mrs. Brand had continued to scream for a priest as long as she was able to speak. Mabel explains, however, that she had had her mother-in-law involuntarily euthanised, knowing that her husband would desire it. Although moved to tears by his mother's passing, Oliver tells Mabel that she did the right thing.