In this chapter, we learn that Shu-Xing's mother, Madame Guinevere, has been expecting her daughter to reveal her true identity. She tells her daughter that she has prepared a new piece of evidence that will make her give up playing the role of "molly" . The evidence, she says, is that when she noticed her daughter's excitement in her sad face, it was because she had planned the murder of the real woman. She also reveals that she is the mother who bore her father's "endless disgust and contempt" when she was a child. When she was divorced, she wondered if she could be the girl who sat next to her in the apartment. She had a part-time job as an actress, and her agent had given her a two-day leave to go to China for a vacation. She asks her mother if she has something to tell her, and she tells her that she had agreed to play the part of the "real" woman in order to protect her daughter.