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 happened, however, to be with me; for I was the executor. There were three conditions attached to the bequest which I was responsible for carrying out. No religious worship was to be performed in the house. The ground floor was to be used as a school for the leather-dealers’ children. And after Satish’s death, the whole property was to be applied for the benefit of that community. Piety was the one thing Uncle Jagamohan could not tolerate. He looked on it as more defiling even than worldliness; and probably these provisions, which he facetiously referred to in English as ‘sanitary precautions,’ were intended as a safeguard against the excessive piety which prevailed in the adjoining half of the house.

‘Come along,’ I said to Satish. ‘Let’s go to your Calcutta house.’

‘I am not quite ready for that yet,’ Satish replied.

I did not understand him.

‘There was a day,’ he explained, ‘when I relied wholly on reason, only to find at last that reason could not support the whole of life’s burden. There was another day, when I placed my reliance on emotion, only to discover it to be a bottomless abyss. The reason and the emotion, you see, were

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