If I pity her and save her from her sorrows,
what then was the purpose of my being born a man?
The real reason of my qualms is that my demand happens to be for
money. That savours of beggary, for money is man's, not woman's.
That is why I had to make it a big figure. A thousand or two
would have the air of petty theft. Fifty thousand has all the
expanse of romantic brigandage. Ah, but riches should really
have been mine! So many of my desires have had to halt, again
and again, on the road to accomplishment simply for want of
money. This does not become me! Had my fate been merely unjust,
it could be forgiven--but its bad taste is unpardonable. It is
not simply a hardship that a man like me should be at his wit's
end to pay his house rent, or should have to carefully count out
the coins for an Intermediate Class railway ticket--it is vulgar!
It is equally clear that Nikhil's paternal estates are a
superfluity to him. For him it would not have been at all
unbecoming to be poor. He would have cheerfully pulled in the
double harness of indigent mediocrity with that precious master
of his.
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