Today I have filled it up. This photograph of mine was taken in my early youth. My face was then fresher, and so was my mind. Then I still cherished some illusions about this world and the next. Faith deceives men, but it has one great merit: it imparts a radiance to the features. My portrait now reposes next to Nikhil's, for are not the two of us old friends? Chapter Four Nikhil's Story III I WAS never self-conscious. But nowadays I often try to take an outside view--to see myself as Bimal sees me. What a dismally solemn picture it makes, my habit of taking things too seriously! Better, surely, to laugh away the world than flood it with tears. That is, in fact, how the world gets on. We relish our food and rest, only because we can dismiss, as so many empty shadows, the sorrows scattered everywhere, both in the home and in the outer world. If we took them as true, even for a moment, where would be our appetite, our sleep? But I cannot dismiss myself as one of these shadows, and so the load of my sorrow lies eternally heavy on the heart of my world. Why not stand out aloof in the highway of the universe, and feel yourself to be part of the all? In the midst of the immense, age-long concourse of humanity, what is Bimal to you? Your wife? What is a wife? A bubble of a name blown big with your own breath, so carefully guarded night and day, yet ready to burst at any pin-prick from outside. My wife--and so, forsooth, my very own! If she says: "No, I am myself"--am I to reply: "How can that be? Are you not mine?" "My wife"--Does that amount to an argument, much less the truth? Can one imprison a whole personality within that name? My wife!--Have I not cherished in this little world all that is purest and sweetest in my life, never for a moment letting it down from my bosom to the dust? What incense of worship, what music of passion, what flowers of my spring and of my autumn, have I not offered up at its shrine? If, like a toy paper-boat, she be swept along into the muddy waters of the gutter--would I not also... ? There it is again, my incorrigible solemnity! Why "muddy"? What "gutter" names, called in a fit of jealousy, do not change the facts of the world. If Bimal is not mine, she is not; and no fuming, or fretting, or arguing will serve to prove that she is. If my heart is breaking--let it break! That will not make the world bankrupt--nor even me; for man is so much greater than the things he loses in this life. The very ocean of tears has its other shore, else none would have ever wept. But then there is Society to be considered ... which let Society consider! If I weep it is for myself, not for Society. If Bimal should say she is not mine, what care I where my Society wife may be?