at last he lay down to rest, he was wearing her scarf hidden under his dress. He had put the boy by his side, and after giving much vent to his exasperation, he said at last ‘I am very fond of you, but I am afraid in future I shall always think of you in connection with this hateful business, and that will put an end to our friendship.’ He said it with such conviction that the boy felt quite forlorn.
For a while they rested, but Genji could not sleep, and at dawn he sent in haste for his ink-stone. He did not write a proper letter, but scribbled on a piece of folded paper, in the manner of a writing exercise, a poem in which he compared the scarf which she had dropped in her flight to the dainty husk which the cicada sheds on some bank beneath a tree.
The boy picked the paper up, and thrust it into the folds of his dress.
Genji was very much distressed at the thought of what the other lady’s feelings must be; but after some reflection he decided that it would be better not to send any message.
The scarf, to which still clung the delicate perfume of its owner, he wore for long afterwards beneath his dress.
When the boy got home he found his sister waiting for him in very ill-humour. ‘It was not your doing that I escaped from the odious quandary in which you landed me! And even so pray what explanation can I offer to my friend?’ ‘A fine little clown the Prince must think you now. I hope you are ashamed of yourself.’
Despite the fact that both parties were using him so ill, the boy drew the rescued verses from out the folds of his dress and handed them to her. She could not forbear to read them. What of this discarded mantle? Why should he speak of it? The coat that the fishers of Iseo left lying upon the shore …[1] those were the words that came into
- ↑ Allusion to the old poem, ‘Does he know that since he left me my eyes are wet as the coat that the fishers … left lying upon the shore?’
