27

Yu~giri was filled with thoughts of the far better placed young lady to whom he could not write. His longing grew. Would he ever see her again? He no longer enjoyed visiting his grandmother and kept to himself at Nijo~. He remembered the room that had been his for so long, the room where they had played so happily together. The very thought of the Sanjo~ house became oppressive.

Genji asked the lady of the orange blossoms to look after the boy. “His grandmother does not have a great many years ahead of her. The two of you have known each other so long—might I ask you to take over?”

It was her way to do everything Genji asked of her. Gently but with complete dedication she put herself into the work of keeping house for Yu~giri.

He would sometimes catch a glimpse of her. She was not at all beautiful, and yet his father had been faithful to her. Was it merely silly, his own inability to forget the beauty of a girl who was being unkind to him? He should look for someone of a similarly compliant nature. Not, however, someone who was positively repulsive. Though Genji had kept the lady of the orange blossoms with him all these years, he seemed quite aware of her defects. When he visited her he was always careful to see that she was as fully ensheathed as an amaryllis bud, and that he was spared the need to look upon her. Yu~giri understood. He had an eye for these things that would have put the adult eye to shame. His grandmother was still very beautiful even now that she had become a nun. Surrounded from infancy by beautiful women, he naturally took adverse notice of a lady who, not remarkably well favored from the start, was past her prime, a bit peaked and thin of hair.