16

The next day he sent a letter inquiring after the old lady, and with it a tightly folded note for the girl:

“Seeking to follow the call of the nestling crane

The open boat is lost among the reeds.

“And comes again and again to you?” *

He wrote it in a childish hand, which delighted the women. The child was to model her own hand upon it, no detail changed, they said.

Sho~nagon sent a very sad answer: “It seems doubtful that my lady, after whom you were so kind as to inquire, will last the day. We are on the point of sending her off to the mountains once more. I know that she will thank you from another world.”

In the autumn evening, his thoughts on his unattainable love, he longed more than ever, unnatural though the wish may have seemed, for the company of the little girl who sprang from the same roots. The thought of the evening when the old nun had described herself as dew holding back from the heavens made him even more impatient—and at the same time he feared that if he were to bring the girl to Nijo~ he would be disappointed in her.

“I long to have it, to bring it in from the moor,

The lavender* that shares its roots with another.”