" Do you seriously mean to advise me to go, then?" asked Binoy.
Gora thumped his knee as he replied: " No, I do not advise you to go. I can put it down in black and white that the day you do go their house, you will go over there completely. The very next day you will begin to take your meals with them; and then down goes your name as a militant preacher of Brahmo Samaj !"
" Indeed ! and what next, pray ?" smile Binoy.
"What next ?" rejoined Gora bitterly. " There is no 'next' after you are dead and gone from your own world. You, the son of a Brahmin, will throw away all sense of restraint and purity and will end by being thrown on the refuse heap like some dead animal. Like a pilot with a broken compass you will lose your bearings, and it will gradually seem mere superstition and narrowness to guide the ship into port,—your idea of the best method of navigation will be reduced to drifting anyhow. But I have not the patience to go on bandying words with you. So I simply say: go and be done with it, if you must. But do not keep racking our nerves by this continual hesitation on the brink of inferno."
Binoy burst out laughing. "The patient who has been given up by the doctor does not necessarily die," said he. " I cannot detect any sign of the approaching end."
" You cannot ?" sneered Gora.
",No."
" You don't find your pulse falling ?" " By no means. There's plenty of strength left in it yet."
" It doesn't seem to you that if a certain fair hand were to serve you the food of an outcaste, that might make it a feast fit for the gods ?"
" That will do, Gora!" said Binoy, blushing deeply. "Shut up!"
" Why?" protested Gora. "I intended no insult. The fair lady in question does not pride herself on being 'invisible even to the sun.'[1] If the least allusion to her tender petal of a hand, which any male person is at liberty to shake strikes you as a descecration, then indeed you're as good as lost!"
"Look here, Gora, I revernce Woman, and in our scriptures also——"
"Don't quote scripture in support of the kind of sentiment you feel, That's not called reverce, but goes by another
- ↑ A Sanskrit phrase for those women who observe very strict purdah.
