6

Both seem to have written to the Hitachi princess. There were no answers. To~ no Chu~jo~ thought this silence deplorable and incomprehensible. What a man wanted was a woman who though impoverished had a keen and ready sensibility and let him guess her feelings by little notes and poems as the clouds passed and the grasses and blossoms came and went. The princess had been reared in seclusion, to be sure, but such extreme reticence was simply in bad taste. Of the two he was the more upset.

A candid and open sort, he said to Genji: “Have you had any answers from the Hitachi lady? I let a drop a hint or two myself, and I have not had a word in reply.”

So it had happened. Genji smiled. “I have had none myself, perhaps because I have done nothing to deserve any.”

It was an ambiguous answer which left his friend more restless than ever. He feared that the princess was playing favorites.

Genji was not in fact very interested in her, though he too found her silence annoying. He persisted in his efforts all the same. To~ no Chu~jo~ was an eloquent and persuasive young man, and Genji would not want to be rejected when he himself had made the first advances. He summoned Tayu~ for solemn

“It bothers me a great deal that she should be so unresponsive. Per-haps she judges me to be among the frivolous and inconstant ones. She is wrong. My feelings are unshakable. It is true that when a lady makes it known that she does not trust me I sometimes go a little astray. A lady who does trust me and who does not have a meddling family, a lady with whom I can be really comfortable, is the sort I find most pleasant.”

“I fear, sir, that she is not your 'tree in the rain.'* She is not, I fear, what you are looking for. You do not often these days find such reserve. And she told him a little more about the princess.

“From what you say, she Would not appear to be a lady with a very sand manner or very grand accomplishments. But the quiet, $F$ naive ones have a charm of their own.” He was thinking of “the evening face.”

He had come down with malaria,* and it was for him a time of secret longing; and so spring and summer passed.