After returning to Europe, Marlow again visits Brussels and finds himself unable to relate to the sheltered Europeans around him. A Company official approaches Marlow and asks for the packet of papers to which Kurtz had entrusted him. Marlow refuses, but he does give the official a copy of Kurtz's report to The Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs with Kurtz's chilling postscript ("Exterminate all the brutes!") torn off. He learns that Kurtz's mother had died after being nursed by Kurtz's "Intended," or fiancée.
Marlow's final duty to Kurtz is to visit his Intended and deliver Kurtz's letters (and her portrait) to her. When he meets her, at her house, she is dressed in mourning and still greatly upset by Kurtz's death. Marlow lets slip that he was with Kurtz when he died, and the Intended asks him to repeat Kurtz's last words Marlow lies to her and says, "The last word he pronounced was — your name." The Intended states that she "knew" Kurtz would have said such a thing, and Marlow leaves, disgusted by his lie yet unable to prevent himself from telling it.
The anonymous narrator on board the Nellie then resumes his narrative. The Director of Companies makes an innocuous remark about the tide, and the narrator looks out at the overcast sky and the Thames — which seems to him to lead "into the heart of an immense darkness."
