was making a quite unnecessary commotion about the business. ‘Wait a little’ said her companion very quietly, ‘here there is a stalemate. My only move is to counterattack over there…’ ‘It is all over’ said the other impatiently ‘I am beaten, let us count the score;’ and she began counting, ‘ten, twenty, thirty, forty’ on her fingers. Genji could not help remembering the old song about the wash-house at Iyo (‘eight tubs to the left, nine tubs to the right’) and as this lady of Iyo, determined that nothing should be left unsettled, went on stolidly counting her losses and gains, he thought her for the moment slightly common. It was strange to contrast her with Utsusemi,[1] who sat silent, her face half-covered, so that he could scarcely discern her features. But when he looked at her fixedly, she, as though uneasy under this gaze of which she was not actually aware, shifted in her seat, and showed him her full profile. Her eyelids gave the impression of being a little swollen, and there was at places a certain lack of delicacy in the lines of her features, while her good points were not visible. But when she began to speak, it was as though she were determined to make amends for the deficiencies of her appearance and show that she had, if not so much beauty, at any rate more sense than her companion.
The latter was now flaunting her charms with more and more careless abandonment. Her continual laughter and high spirits were certainly rather engaging, and she seemed in her way to be a most entertaining person. He did not imagine that she was very virtuous, but that was far from being altogether a disadvantage.
It amused him very much to see people behaving quite naturally together. He had lived in an atmosphere of
- ↑ This name means ‘cicada’ and is given to her later in the story in reference to the scarf which she ‘discarded as a cicada sheds its husk.’ But at this point it becomes grammatically important that she should have a name and I therefore anticipate.
