make her feel that if he had stayed away it had been from a melancholy necessity and not because he had found more amusing company elsewhere. ‘It is not so much my own anxiety that unnerves me as the spectacle of the appalling helplessness and misery into which her illness has plunged her wretched parents, and it was in the hope of forgetting for a little while all these sickroom horrors that I came to see you here to-day. If only just for this once you could overlook all my offences and be kind to me….’
His pleading had no effect. Her attitude was more hostile than before. He was not angry with her, nor indeed was he surprised. Day was already breaking when, un-solaced, he set out for home. But as she watched him go his beauty suddenly made havoc of all her resolutions and again she felt that it was madness to leave him. Yet what had she to stay for? Aoi was with child and this could only be a sign that he had made his peace with her. Henceforward he could lead a life of irreproachable rectitude and if once in a way he came to make his excuse as he had come to-day, what purpose would that serve, save to keep ever fresh the torment of her desires? Thus when his letter came next day it found her more distraught than before: ‘The sick woman who for a few days past had shown some improvement is again suffering acutely and it is at present impossible for me to leave her.’ Certain that this was a mere excuse she sent in reply the poem ‘The fault is mine and the regret, if careless as the peasant girl who stoops too low amid the sprouting rice I soiled my sleeve in love’s dark road.’ At the end of her letter she reminded him of the old song: ‘Now bitterly do I repent that ever I brought my pitcher to the mountain well where waters were but deep enough to soil my sleeve.’ He looked at the delicate handwriting. Who was there, even among women of her high lineage and breeding, that could rival the
