One day, Mr. Sen knocked at my door. I stepped onto the threshold and saw him ready to leave, while Maitreyi was dressed in the most beautiful sari she owned, the color of raw coffee, with a brown shawl and golden slippers.

“My daughter is giving a lecture on the essence of beauty,” he told me.

I looked at them, surprised, and smiled with feigned wonder and delight. Maitreyi played indifferently with her shawl. She held a roll of manuscript in her hand and her hair was carefully arranged. Without a doubt, she had perfumed herself with “Keora atar,” for that dizzying fragrance reached me even there.

“I wish her all the success from my heart. Only, let her not be intimidated,” I added, looking at her.

“It’s not the first time she’s spoken,” Mr. Sen clarified, proudly. “It’s a pity you don’t understand Bengali well enough to listen to her yourself…”

I went back into my room, somewhat intimidated, with a vague disappointment in my soul. I resumed my reading with difficulty, for the image of Maitreyi lecturing on beauty obsessed me. Either this is a joke, or I am a fool, I told myself. I never would have believed that this girl could think about such responsible matters. I kept repeating, stupidly: the essence of beauty…

When I heard the car stopping in front of the house, about two hours later, I deliberately went out onto the veranda to meet them. Maitreyi seemed a little sad to me.

“How was it?” I asked, addressing them both.

“Not everyone understood her,” the engineer replied. “She was too

Deeply, she had spoken of things too intimate: about creation and emotion, about the internalization of beauty, and the audience could not always follow her.

For a moment, I thought Maitreyi would stop and no longer speak with me, but she passed before the door without looking at me and ran upstairs. I heard her closing the windows in her room. I could not settle myself, so I took my cap and set out to walk in the park. As I descended the steps of the veranda, I heard myself called from the balcony.

"Where are you going?"

Maitreyi was leaning over the balustrade, in a white sari, for the house, her hair loose on her shoulders and her arms bare. I told her I was going to walk in the park and to buy some tobacco.

"You can send a servant to buy tobacco."

"And what should I do?" I asked.

"If you wish, come upstairs and let us talk..."

This invitation disturbed me greatly, for although I could move freely throughout the house, I had never yet been in Maitreyi’s room. I arrived there in an instant. She awaited me at the door, with a tired face, pleading eyes, and lips strangely red.

(This detail struck me: I learned later that whenever she went out in the city, she painted her lips with pan, following the ceremonial of Bengali elegance.)