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        “To the man who loves art for its own sake, heh, don’t move,” I screamed, blowing up my paint brush in air, “It is frequently, in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to draw, Aditi, when I haven’t any other work, and, I am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you’re a pretty good model. You have given prominence not so much to the many causes and sensational trials in which I have figured but rather to those incidents which may have been trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made my special province.”

      “And yet,” said she, smiling, “I cannot quite hold myself absolved from the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my records.”

      “You have erred, perhaps,” I observed, making myself deeply in my recent work which was nothing but painting—“you have erred perhaps in attempting to put color and life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing.”

      “It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter,” she remarked with some coldness, for she was repelled by the egotism which she had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my character may be.

      “That’s my one of the biggest mistake to say you yes.” She said almost crying.

      “Just a bit more.” I grinned. Her face turned to unexplainable expression.

      “No, it is not selfishness or conceit,” said I, answering, as was I won’t, my thoughts rather than my words. “If I claim full justice for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing—a thing beyond myself.”

    It was a cold morning of the early spring, and we sat after breakfast on either side of a table in the old room at Vasan’s house. A thick fog rolled down between the lines of dun-colored houses, and the opposing windows loomed like dark, shapeless blurs through the heavy yellow wreaths. Our gas was lit and shone on the white cloth and glimmer of china and metal, for the table had not been cleared yet. I had been silent all the morning, I didn’t went to college either because Alia got a minor fever. My mind hallucinate me that what I did in college without her. So I finally settled at last with my paint brush, to draw Aditi.

     “At the same time,” I remarked after a pause, during which I had sat puffing at my long painting brush and gazing down into the model, “You can hardly be open to a charge of sensationalism, for out of these cases which you have been so kind as to interest yourself in, a fair proportion do not treat of crime, in its legal sense, at all. The small matter in which I endeavored to help the Gautam Shekhar, the singular experience of Miss Aarohi Pathak, the problem connected with the man with the twisted lip, and the incident of the noble bachelor, were all matters which are outside the pale of the law. But in avoiding the sensational, I fear that you may have bordered on the trivial.”

“The end may have been so,” she answered, “but the methods I hold to have been novel and of interest.”

“Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial, I cannot blame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools. I think that I have touched bottom at last, however. This message I had this morning marks my zero-point, I fancy. Read it!” I tossed my phone across to her on the other side of table.

     “I make my business cards, I think she got my number from that cards.” I said, flickering my eyes on Aditi and again on painting.

It was dated from the preceding evening, and ran thus:

  Dear Jay:

       I am very anxious to consult you as to whether I should or should not accept a situation which has been offered to me as governess. I shall call at half-past ten tomorrow if I do not inconvenience you.

       ­-Aarushi Talwar.

“Do you know this Aarushi?” She asked.

“Not I.”

“It is half-past ten now.” She eyed on her watch.

“Yes, and I have no doubt that is her ring.” The door-bell ring twice.

“It may turn out to be of more interest than you think. You remember that the affair of the divine land, which appeared to be a mere whim at first, developed into a serious investigation. It may be so in this case, also.” She thrilled.

“Well, let us hope so. But our doubts will very soon be solved, for here, unless I am much mistaken, is the person in question.”

As I spoke the door opened and a young lady entered the room. She was plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face, seem like a sunrise, except her figure she haven’t any ravishing beauty and with the brisk manner of a woman who has had her own way to make in the world.

“You will excuse my troubling you, I am sure,” said she, as my sister rose to greet her, “but I have had a very strange experience, and as I have no parents or relations of any sort from whom I could ask advice, I thought that perhaps you would be kind enough to

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Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 01.05.2016
ISBN: 978-3-7396-5139-2

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