The sun was shining down on the round backs of the boiler room machines, the varnished wood of the masts and the browned foreheads of the passengers.
The troubled surface of the water, also illuminated by a living light, cut itself at the prow in two furrows, which unrolled until the edge of the two banks. At each bend of the Ganges, one found the same human curtain: a crowd of pale people, dissolved in this
space produced by the absence of any sound capable of reaching the ship. The sky was almost empty – and the boredom between Lolita and Binoy, made the appearance of the other travelers hopelessly insignificant.

When night fell, a cool breeze suddenly rose. From the interior of the cabins, a few ephemeral noises and as many echoes of worldly discussions. Worried, standing on the deck, Lolita as she walked by chance towards the front of the ship, she saw Binoy asleep on one of the armchairs

Binoy, wrapped in the shawl that she had given him earlier to cover himself. Her heart
when she saw that the young man had kept his hand clenched on a piece of the cloth. She realized that he had been thinking about her since she left him there. Binoy seemed so close and so far away…

She turned around to go to her cabin, and when she reached the door, she closed her eyes without knowing it, to contemplate the moving image of a smiling and sleeping face. For Lolita, he became the center of the galaxy of stars that watched over the world. The steamer reached Calcutta in the morning. Binoy called for a car, put Lolita in it and sat down next to the driver. Gora was waiting in jail.