Part 3 Section 8 Summary

The year is 1923. Graveyards had had an effect on Olivia even back in England, where she would wander through the rows, reading inscriptions and occasionally sitting on the head stones. She thought the graveyard at Satipur "evocative." It contained mostly the graves of children—most recently the Saunders' baby, marked by the crumbling Italian angel statue. A few adult graves dated back to the Mutiny, when the gallant British officers had died "defending their women and children." Others came from the outer provinces where there were no Christian cemeteries.

After she had first seen that baby's grave, she had shut herself in her stiflingly hot room (in tears at the thought of having a child that would die). Douglas had had to devote an entire evening to consoling her: children rarely die these days (that is only how it was...