From then on, the days began to change. Of each one I could write an entire notebook, so rich were they, and so fresh have they remained in my memory. It was the beginning of August, during the holidays. We spent almost all our time together; I withdrew to my room only to change, to write in my journal, and to sleep. The rest of the time we studied together, for Maitreyi was preparing privately for her Bachelor of Arts, and I helped her. Those hours of ours, listening to the commentaries on Shakuntala, side by side on the carpet, not understanding a single word of the Sanskrit text, but sitting next to Maitreyi, because I could secretly squeeze her hands, kiss her hair, gaze at her and tease her, while the teacher, a myopic pandit, corrected her translation or her answers to the grammatical questionnaire. How she interpreted Kalidasa for me, and how she found in every love verse a detail from our own hidden love. I had come to like only what she liked: music, poetry, Bengali literature. I strove to decipher the Vaishnava poems in the original, I read the translation of Shakuntala with emotion, and nothing that had once interested me could now hold my attention. I looked at the shelves of physics books without the slightest thrill. I had forgotten everything except my work (which I finished reluctantly, eager to return home sooner) and Maitreyi.

A few days after our confession, she came to tell me that she had hidden something from me then. I was so intoxicated by the certainty of Maitreyi’s love and by the voluptuousness that always seized me in her presence, that I immediately took her in my arms and began to kiss her.

“You must listen to me,” she repeated. “You must know everything. Have you ever loved like this, as you do now?”

“Never,” I answered quickly, not knowing whether I was lying or only exaggerating.

(Besides, what were those ephemeral, sensual loves of my youth, compared to this new passion, which made me forget everything and mold myself to the soul and desires of Maitreyi?)

“Nor have I,” Maitreyi confessed. “But I have had other loves. Shall I tell you about them?”

“As you wish.”

“I first loved a pcm, one of those we call ‘seven leaves,’” she began, preparing to tell her story.

I began to laugh and caressed her protectively, mockingly. — That is not love, my dear. — Oh, but it is love. Chabù loves her tree now too; but mine was great, for at that time I lived in Alipore, and there were many strong, tall trees, and I fell in love with one, tall and proud, yet so delicate, so caressing... I could no longer part from it. We would spend the whole day embraced, and I would talk to it, kiss it, weep. I composed verses for it, though I never wrote them down, I recited them only to it; who else