Content Warning: This section discusses pedophilia, incest, and non-consensual medical experimentation.

Fifteen months pass; McCandless inherits some money when his father dies and becomes a doctor. One day, while walking in a park, McCandless sees Godwin and Bella. Bella looks well, but Godwin looks drawn and miserable. Bella holds out her hand for McCandless to kiss. She still speaks in a peculiar way, but McCandless judges her mental age to be around 12 or 13.

Bella tells Godwin, whom she calls God, to rest on a bench while she and McCandless go for a walk. She drags McCandless into a rhododendron bush, where the two have an ambiguously sexual encounter. When they resume their walk, Bella admits that she has had similar encounters with other men and with women. McCandless interrupts her to ask her to marry him; she tells him not to change the subject. 

McCandless asks Bella if she has ever done anything sexual with Godwin. She has not, which is why Godwin is so unhappy. They return to Godwin, and Bella tells him that she and McCandless are going to get married. At this, Godwin opens his mouth impossibly wide and emits a piercing scream that causes Bella to faint and McCandless to momentarily lose his senses.