then sobbing and howling in maudlin repentance, vowing never to
touch liquor again, and yet, the very same evening, sitting down
to drink and drink--it would fill me with disgust. But my
intoxication today is still more fearful. The stuff has not to
be procured or poured out: it springs within my veins, and I know
not how to resist it.

Must this continue to the end of my days? Now and again I start
and look upon myself, and think my life to be a nightmare which
will vanish all of a sudden with all its untruth. It has become
so frightfully incongruous. It has no connection with its past.
What it is, how it could have come to this pass, I cannot
understand.

One day my sister-in-law remarked with a cutting laugh: "What a
wonderfully hospitable Chota Rani we have! Her guest absolutely
will not budge. In our time there used to be guests, too; but
they had not such lavish looking after--we were so absurdly taken
up with our husbands. Poor brother Nikhil is paying the penalty
of being born too modern. He should have come as a guest if he
wanted to stay on. Now it looks as if it were time for him to
quit ... O you little demon, do your glances never fall, by
chance, on his agonized face?"

This sarcasm did not touch me; for I knew that these women had it
not in them to understand the nature of the cause of my devotion.
I was then wrapped in the protecting armour of the exaltation of
sacrifice, through which such shafts were powerless to reach and
shame me.