Not long after that, one afternoon, I met Harold. He seemed colder, more spiteful.

"Is it true that you’re marrying the engineer’s daughter?" he asked me, among other things.

I blushed and began to make fun, as I always do when I’m embarrassed, especially if I have to defend someone dear to me. Harold quickly brushed aside my jokes and told me he had heard this at the office, where he had once looked for me to invite me to a picnic. He had also learned then that I wanted to renounce my own faith and convert to Hinduism. And although he himself is a great sinner and only goes to church for Iris, this news horrified him enough. He told me that Sen was a monster, that I had been bewitched, that I should give five rupees to the "Sisters of the Poor" so they would pray for me.

"How are the girls?" I asked.

"They miss you," he confessed. "You’re probably saving a lot there, in Bhowanipore," he began again after a moment. "You don’t pay for house, you don’t pay for food, and you never go out in the city. What do you do all day?"

"I’m learning Bengali so I can take my Provincial-Manager exam," I lied. "And besides, it’s a new world, I don’t even know how the time passes..."

He asked to borrow five rupees, so he could go that evening to the Y.M.C.A. ball.

"Doesn’t it tempt you?" he probed.

In truth, it did not tempt me. I thought without melancholy of those years of waste and error spent on Wellesley Street, on Ripon Street. I looked at Harold, and his lanky body, his dark face with beautiful, shadowed eyes, evoked nothing for me. A stranger, this comrade of mine, with whom I had chased after so many girls and wasted so many nights. The life I had begun seemed so sacred to me that I did not even dare to confide it to him. He promised to visit me one day and carefully wrote down my address. ("For some possible large loan," I thought.)

At home I found everyone in the drawing room, having tea. Mantu was there, and his wife, Lilu, and Khokha, and Khokha’s sisters (two of those shadow-women whom I hardly ever saw). I told them all, with great sincerity, about my meeting with Harold and my disgust for the life led by the Europeans and Eurasians in this city, a life I myself had led for so long.

This confession of mine delighted them. The women drank me in with their eyes and kept praising me in their incomprehensible argot, while Mantu squeezed my hands and closed his eyes, as was his habit. Only the engineer, after warning me about my overzealous enthusiasm, withdrew to read his indispensable detective novel.

I went upstairs to the terrace with Maitreyi, Khokha, and Lilu. We waited for evening, stretched out on carpets, speaking rarely and each seeking the most comfortable position,