From the journal of the following month: “The two of us, alone, discussing virility; Walt Whitman, Papini, and the others. She has read little, but listens to me. I know she likes me. She tells me so. She confesses that she would give herself as in a poem by Tagore, on the beach, at the onset of a storm. Literature.”

“Passion grows, a delicious and natural mixture of idyll, sexuality, friendship, devotion. When I sit beside her on the carpet, reading together, if she touches me, I am aroused and become wildly agitated. I know she is agitated too. (Note. Not true. Maitreyi never felt passion at that time.) We say much to each other through literature. Sometimes we both sense that we desire each other. (Note. Inaccurate; Maitreyi was captivated only by the game, by the voluptuousness of illusion, not by temptation. She could not then imagine what passion might mean.)”

“The first evening and night (until eleven) spent alone with Maitreyi, translating Tagore’s Vallaka and talking. The engineer, returning from a dinner in the city, surprised us in her room, chatting. I, calm, continued to speak. Maitreyi became flustered, grabbed the volume of poems and opened it; and when Mr. Sen entered the room, she said: — We are learning Bengali... So, she lies too?! (Note. This journal is exasperating.

Why must I suffer so much just to understand a single person? For I confess, I understood nothing of Maitreyi at the time, though I believed I loved her and that I was loved in return. She did not lie, she merely forgot. She had forgotten that I had come to her for Vallaka, and when the engineer entered, she remembered, naturally. Had it been someone else, she would have continued the conversation, but in front of her father she never spoke, and so she returned to her book.

Today I brought her lotuses, so many that, as she took them in her arms and thanked me, her face was entirely hidden. I am certain that Maitreyi loves me. (Note. How long it took me to understand!) She writes poems for me and recites verses to me all day long. I do not love her. I admire her immensely and she excites me: everything, her flesh as much as her soul. I have discovered something new in her. I was talking with Lilu and told her that I would repeat certain things, things I had heard from her, to her husband.

“And what could he do to me?” Lilu asked insinuatingly.

“I don’t know, I’m not versed in marital quarrels,” I replied.

“He will punish her, in one way or another,” Maitreyi emphasized, and repeated the words, laughing, when we were alone.

So, she knows as well?... Besides, she confessed to me that she would like to fall into madness, intoxicated by love or by passion. I discover sincerities inaccessible to others, which I would never have suspected in the early days of our friendship. (Note. The truth