I did not find Harold at home, but the landlady unlocked my room and let me in, and I threw myself onto the bed, face up, beneath the fan. Poor Mrs. Ribeiro did not know how to behave with me or how to ask me anything.

"Nothing unfortunate has happened to me, Mrs. Ribeiro," I assured her. "My employer, engineer Sen, must undergo an operation today, and that is making me uneasy."

I did not want to betray myself, I did not want to tell even Harold the reason for which I had left Bhowanipore. Their gossip would have disgusted me terribly, for I had no doubt that Harold would have repeated my story to all the Eurasian "friends," and the girls would have tried to console me with their eternal sentimental stupidities, urging me to drink and make love, while I was incapable of accepting any consolation, however brutal. It seemed to me that I had no right even to mention Maitreyi’s name in their midst. Yet I was so stunned, so completely surrendered to my pain, that I could not think of anything precise; I only tried to intuit, to feel concretely my separation from Maitreyi. I could not succeed; I started in fright every time I saw again her last image, her body collapsed on the balcony, and I drove it away. I did not know what to fix my thoughts upon, and I chose a few scenes that were comforting to me (the jasmine wreath, the library, Chandernagore), which I contemplated, calming myself, but

As soon as the film drew toward its end, I would see again Mrs. Sen at the table, looking at me with hostility, or Mr. Sen saying to me: “If you wish to thank me for the good…,” and this would remind me once more, just as acutely and wrenchingly, of my separation from Maitreyi, and I had to close my eyes, shift in bed, sigh deeply, to chase away these thoughts.

Mrs. Ribeiro, after having been absent for about an hour, busy with household matters, entered the room again, asking what I would like to drink; tea, whisky, or beer? I refused with a gesture so weary that the old lady came closer to my bed, seriously concerned.

“But you are ill, Allan,” she said to me.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I feigned. “I’ve been exhausted these last months, because I didn’t go anywhere this summer, and the engineer’s misfortune has affected me deeply. I want to leave Calcutta for a while… Do you have any vacant rooms, Mrs. Ribeiro?”

When she heard about a vacant room, my hostess was all aflutter with happiness, urged me to see the room next to Harold’s, asked why I no longer wanted to stay in Bhowanipore, then, seeing that these inquiries tired me, changed the subject, asked about my temperature, advised me to leave Calcutta at once for two or three weeks, somewhere in the mountains (Darjeeling, for instance, or Shillong,