19

There was a heavy mist and the ground was white. Had he been on his way from a visit to a woman, he would have found the scene very affecting; but as it was he was vaguely depressed. Passing the house of a woman he had been seeing in secret, he had someone knock on the gate. There was no answer, and so he had someone else from his retinue, a man of very good voice, chant this poem twice in tones that could not fail to attract attention:

“Lost though I seem to be in the mists of dawn,

I see your gate, and cannot pass it by.”

She sent out an ordinary maid who seemed, however, to be a woman of some sensibility:

“So difficult to pass? Then do come in.

No obstacle at all, this gate of grass.”

Something more was needed to end the night, but dawn was ap-proaching. Back at Nijo~, he lay smiling at the memory of the girl. The sun was high when he arose and set about composing a letter. A rather special sort of poem seemed called for, but he laid his brush aside and deliberated for a time, and presently sent some pictures.