Page:An Unfinished Song.djvu/94



a letter in due time, a letter that breathed love and humility. It melted my heart and made me still more repentant. Needless to say the letter was written in English. That the love letters of a Bengali youth, whose whole life is one great imitation, should be written in his native tongue,—this preposterous idea would not occur to any one.

Of course, I began to write the reply in English. I was reputed to be well grounded in that language. I had received my education at one of the best English schools in Calcutta. My correspondence was conducted almost entirely in English; the letter to my father and to my aunt were the only ones written in Bengali. I seldom even spoke in my mother tongue with my girl friends, and as to the English poems and novels that I had read, their number was legion. To tell the truth I was a little vain of the command I had acquired over the