to the place where she had told him he would find her (a room in the northern outbuilding) and sent in a long message contrasting his present quiet and serious existence with his now discarded frivolities. She in return replied with a message, but did not suggest that they should meet. This angered him. ‘You do not seem to realize,’ he said, ‘that such excursions as this are now no part of my ordinary existence and can only be arranged with the greatest difficulty. I had hoped that instead of keeping me beyond the pale, you would hasten to relieve all the anxiety that I have had concerning you in the long months since we met.’ To this appeal were added the protests of her waiting-ladies who were scandalized at the idea of Prince Genji being left waiting outside the house. At first she pleaded the impossibility of receiving a guest in surroundings so cramped and wretched, her duty towards her daughter at this critical hour, the undesirability of such an interview just on the eve of her permanent departure. But though the prospect of facing him filled her with unspeakable depression, she had not the heart to treat him unkindly, and at last, looking very grave, with sighs and hesitation at every step she came forward to meet him. ‘I presume that here one is allowed no further than the verandah,’ he said, and mounting the narrow bamboo platform that surrounded the building he took his seat there. An evening moon had risen and as she saw him moving in its gentle light she knew that all this while she had not been wrong; he was indeed more lovely, more enticing than anyone in the world beside. He began trying to explain why it was that for so many months on end he had not been able to visit her; but he soon got into a tangle, and feeling suddenly embarrassed he plucked a spray from the Sacred Tree[1] which grew outside
- ↑ The sakaki, a species of evergreen oak, is planted at Shintō shrines.
