2

The safflower princess had lived a very straitened life after the death of her father, Prince Hitachi. Then had come that windfall. For Genji it had been the merest trifle, but for her, whose sleeves were so pitifully narrow, it was as if all the stars had suddenly fallen into her bowl. And then had come the days when the whole world had seemed to turn against him. Genji did not have time for everyone, and after his removal to distant Suma he did not or could not take the trouble to write. The Princess wept for a time, and lived a loveless and threadbare existence after the tears had dried.

“Some people seem to have done all the wrong things in their other lives,” grumbled one of her old women. “As if he had not been unkind enough already, the Blessed One all of a sudden brings a bit of pleasure —rather more than a bit, actually—and then takes it away again. How nice it was! The way of the world, you might say, that it should all disappear —and a body is expected to go on living.”

Yes, it had been very perverse of the Blessed One. A lady grows used to hunger and deprivation, but when they have been absent for a time they no longer seem like proper and usual conditions. Women who could be useful to her had somehow of their own accord come into her ken, and one

by one they went away again; and so, as the months passed, her house was lonelier and lonelier.