8

It was an evening toward the end of the Eighth Month when the moon was late in rising. The stars were bright and the wind sighed through the pine trees. The princess was talking sadly of old times. Tayu~ had judged the occasion a likely one and Genji had come in the usual secrecy. The princess gazed uneasily at the decaying fence as the moon came up. Tayu~ persuaded her to play a soft strain on her koto, which was not at all displeasing. If only she could make the princess over even a little more into the hospitable modern sort, thought Tayu~, herself so willing in these matters. There was no one to challenge Genji as he made his way inside. He summoned Tayu~.

“A fine thing,” said Tayu~, feigning great surprise. “Genji has come. He is always complaining about what a bad correspondent you are, and I have had to say that there is little I can do. And so he said that he would come himself and give you a lesson in manners. And how am I to answer him now? These expeditions are not easy for him and it would be cruel to send him away. Suppose you speak to him—through your curtains, of course.”

The princess stammered that she would not know what to say and withdrew to an inner room. Tayu~ thought her childish.

“You are very inexperienced, my lady,” she said with a smile. “It is all right for people in your august position to make a show of innocence when they have parents and relatives to look after them, but your rather sad circumstances make this reserve seem somehow out of place.”

The princess was not, after all, one to resist very stoutly. “If I need not speak to him but only listen, and if you will lower the shutters, I shall receive him.”

“And leave him out on the veranda? That would not do at all. He is not a man, I assure you, to do anything improper.” Tayu~ spoke with great firmness. She barred the doors, having put out a cushion for Genji in the next room.

The lady was very shy indeed. Not having the faintest notion how to address such a fine gentleman, she put herself in Tayu~'s hands. She sighed and told herself that Tayu~ must have her reasons.

Her old nurse had gone off to have a nap. The two or three young women who were still with the princess were in a fever to see this gentleman of whom the whole world was talking. Since the princess did not seem prepared to do anything for herself, Tayu~ changed her into presentable clothes and otherwise got her ready. Genji had dressed himself carefully though modestly and presented a very handsome figure indeed. How she

would have liked to show him to someone capable of appreciating him, thought Tayu~. Here his charms were wasted. But there was one thing she need not fear: an appearance of forwardness or impertinence on the part of the princess. Yet she was troubled, for she did fear that even as she was acquitted of the delinquency with which Genji was always charging her, she might be doing injury to the princess.

Genji was certain that he need not fear being dazzled—indeed the certainty was what had drawn him to her. He caught a faint, pleasing scent, and a soft rustling as her women urged her forward. They suggested serenity and repose such as to convince him that his attentions were not misplaced. Most eloquently, he told her how much she had been in his thoughts over the months. The muteness seemed if anything more unsettling from near at hand than from afar.

“Countless times your silence has silenced me.

My hope is that you hope for something better.

“Why do you not tell me clearly that you dislike me?'Uncertainty weaves a sadly tangled web.'“*

Her nurse's daughter, a clever young woman, finding the silence un-bearable, came to the princess's side and offered a reply:

“I cannot ring a bell enjoining silence.

Silence, strangely, is my only answer.” +

The young voice had a touch of something like garrulity in it. Una-ware that it was not the princess's, Genji thought it oddly unrestrained and, given her rank, even somewhat coquettish.

“I am quite speechless myself.

“Silence, I know, is finer by far than words.

Its sister, dumbness, at times is rather painful.”

He talked on, now joking and now earnestly entreating, but there was no further response. It was all very strange—her mind did not seem to work as others did. Finally losing patience, he slid the door open.# Tayu~ was aghast—he had assured her that he would behave himself. Though concerned for the poor princess, she slipped off to her own room as if nothing had happened. The princess's young women were less disturbed. Such misdemeanors were easy to forgive when the culprit was so uniquely handsome. Their reproaches were not very loud, though they could see that their lady was in a state of shock, so swiftly had it happened. She was incapable now of anything but dazed silence. It was strange and wonderful, thought Genji, that the world still contained such a lady. A measure of eccentricity could be excused in a lady who had lived so sheltered a life. He was both puzzled and sympathetic.

But how, given her limited resources, was the lady to win his affec-tion? It was with much disappointment that he departed late in the night. Though Tayu~ had been listening carefully, she pretended that she did not know of his departure and did not come out to see him off. He would have had nothing to say to her.