Passing a pub on the way home, Megs decides to stop for a drink and write down her last notes. Inside, she sees Padraig with a girl she assumes to be his girlfriend. Padraig approaches Megs and looks at the diagrams she has created while trying to find an answer in Lewis’s stories. When Padraig questions whether George will find her diagrams helpful, Megs storms outside. Padraig follows, and they both slip on a patch of ice and fall into a snowdrift together. Padraig gently points out that he was not making fun of Megs. However, he does not believe that George wants her to translate imagination into logic. Megs admits that she wanted to try one last time, as she cannot fulfill George’s Christmas wish—to visit Dunluce Castle. Padraig offers to take them to Ireland in his father’s car. Revealing that the girl in the pub is not his girlfriend, he kisses Megs.

On the morning before Christmas Eve, Megs is alone with George when a car pulls up outside, and Padraig emerges. Padraig announces that he is taking them on the eight-hour journey to Dunluce Castle and that they will stay overnight with his aunt Mary.