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      It was late in the Third Month. Murasaki's spring garden was coming ever more to life with blossoms and singing birds. Elsewhere spring had departed, said the other ladies, and why did it remain here? Genji thought it a pity that the young women should have only distant glimpses of the moss on the island, a deeper green each day. He had carpenters at work on Chinese pleasure boats, and on the day they were launched he summoned palace musicians for water music. Princes and high courtiers came crowding to hear.

Akikonomu was in residence at Rokujo~. Now was the time, thought Murasaki, for a proper answer to the poem about the garden that “awaits the spring.” * Genji agreed. It would have been good to show these spring blossoms to the empress herself, but casual visits were out of the question for one in her position. Numbers of her young women who were thought likely to enjoy such an outing were therefore rowed out over the south lake, which ran from her southwest quarter to Murasaki's southeast, with a hillock separating the two. The boats left from the hillock. Murasaki's women were stationed in the angling pavilion at the boundary between the two quarters.

The dragon and phoenix boats were brilliantly decorated in the Chi-nese fashion. The little pages and helmsmen, their hair still bound up in the page-boy manner, wore lively Chinese dress, and everything about the arrangements was deliciously exotic, to add to the novelty, for the empress,s women, of this southeast quarter. The boats pulled up below a cliff at an island cove, where the smallest of the hanging rocks was like a detail of a painting. The branches caught in mists from either side were like a tapestry, and far away in Murasaki's private gardens a willow trailed its branches in a deepening green and the cherry blossoms were rich and sensuous. In other places they had fallen, but here they were still at their smiling best, and along the galleries wisteria was beginning to send forth its lavender. Yellow yamabuki reflected on the lake as if about to join its own image. Waterfowl swam past in amiable pairs, and flew in and out with twigs in their bills, and one longed to paint the mandarin ducks as they coursed about on the water. Had that Chinese woodcutter been present, he might well have gazed on until his ax handle rotted away. Presently it was evening.

“The breezes blow, the wave flowers brightly blossom.

Will it be the Cape of Yamabuki?” *

“Is this the lake where flows the River of Ide,+

That yamabuki should plunge into its depths?”

“There is no need to visit Turtle Mountain.#

'Ageless' shall be the name of our pleasure boats.”

“Our boats row out into the bright spring sun,

And water drops from the oars like scattering petals.”

Poem followed poem. The young women seemed to forget that the day must end and they must go home.

In the gathering twilight, to the sonorous strains of “The Royal Deer,” ** the boats were pulled up once more at the angling pavilion and the women reluctantly disembarked. It was a building of simple but very great elegance. The lengths to which the competitive young women had gone with their dress and grooming made one think of a tapestry upon which blossoms had fallen. The music, all very novel, went on and on, for Genji had chosen musicians whose repertory did not permit of monotony.

It was night, and they seemed indefatigable. Flares having been put out in the garden, they were invited to the moss carpet below the verandas, and the princes and high courtiers had places above with the kotos and flutes in which they took such pride. The most accomplished of the professional flutists struck up a melody in the so~jo~ mode,++ in which the courtiers joined most brilliantly with their kotos, and as they moved on to “How Grand the Day"* even the most ignorant of the footmen off among the horses and carriages seemed to respond. The sky and the music, the spring modes and echoes, all seemed better here—no one could fail to see the difference. The night was passed in music. With “Joy of Spring"+ the mode shifted to an intimate minor. Prince Hotaru twice sang “Green Willow,”# in very good voice. Genji occasionally

Morning came. From behind her fences Akikonomu listened to the morning birds and feared that her autumn garden had lost the contest.

Though a perpetual spring radiance seemed to hang over this Rokujo~ mansion, there were those who had complained of a want of interesting young ladies. Now the rumors were of a new lady in the northeast quarter, and how pretty she was and how attentive Genji seemed to be. The anticipated stream of letters had commenced. Several of those whose station in life made them confident that their candidacy was acceptable already had their intermediaries at work. Others seemed to be keeping their ardor rather more to themselves. It is to be imagined that several of the suitors, To~ no Chu~jo~'s son, for instance, would have dropped their suits if they had known who she really was.

Prince Hotaru, Genji's brother, had lost his wife of some years and for three years had been living a lonely bachelor's life. He was now quite open with his suit. Pretending to be hopelessly drunk, he was very amusing indeed as he gamboled about all willow-like with a spray of wisteria in his cap.* Quite as expected, thought Genji, though he gave no sign that he noticed.

The wine flagon came around once more and the prince pretended to be in great discomfort. “If there were not something rather special to keep me here, I think I would be trying to escape. It is too much, oh, really too much.” He refused to drink any more.

“Lavender holds me and puts me in mind of things.

I mean, let them say what they will, to throw myself in.”

He generously divided his wisteria and put a sprig in Genji's cap.

Genji smiled broadly.

“Please hold yourself in abeyance beneath these flowers,

To judge if the plunge would have the proper effect.”

The prince accepted this suggestion, it seemed, and stayed on. The morning concert was if anything livelier than the evening concert had been.