I thought everything had been discovered and I tossed and turned all night, unable to close my eyes. Toward morning, Maitreyi came to me again, without my noticing, and slipped a note under my door: "Mother knows nothing. Don't worry. Don't betray yourself. Maitreyi."

When I read it, I felt as if I had been pardoned or that my sentence had been postponed. I wrote Maitreyi a long letter, in which I told her that we must restrain our imprudent nightly meetings now, when everyone is watchful—both the engineer and Chabù. The truth was that I myself did not know how this relationship of ours would end. Maitreyi had made a number of allusions to Mrs. Sen, pretending that I had fallen in love with a friend of hers (whom we had nicknamed Anasuya back when we were reading and discussing Shakuntala together), and that I did not know how to ask for her hand in marriage; and Mrs. Sen had replied that such marriages, resulting from a simple sentimental infatuation, lead only to misfortune for both spouses, because nothing lasting and nothing happy can come from a passion when that passion has not been corrected by tradition—that is, by family, by people who know what marriage and love mean, matters far more serious than we young people imagine, for to be married does not mean "to gather flowers together," nor to let oneself be consumed by an ephemeral and deceptive passion.

I confess that I recognized myself entirely in Mrs. Sen's judgment, for I had no other source than passion and we had thought only of ourselves, loving each other. And Mrs. Sen, discussing my camouflaged love for Anasuya, told Maitreyi that a marriage is never founded on love, but on sacrifice, on renunciation, on complete abandonment to the will of destiny. This was a conception that not even my sincerest Indianization could accept. But it made me understand how many obstacles I would encounter the day I decided to ask for Maitreyi's hand in marriage. I even wondered whether her solution—rape—might not be more effective. Then they would be faced with a fait accompli and would have to give her to me, for no one else would be

taken her. Only now do I truly understand how much I loved Maitreyi, if I could contemplate such fantastic solutions.

The days passed, all the same, filled with repeated fears and ever more dangerous risks, until the event which I shall recount below. Only one occurrence interrupted this succession of desperate, memoryless days (for, if I did not have my journal, I would remember nothing from that time, so vivid and attentive was I to everything happening around me, and I never had a moment to recall or to meditate, to connect events one to another, to relive certain scenes; so now I must rely on those very brief notes, as if deciphering someone else’s life, for the memory of those days and nights of burning agony is lost to