3

He sent over to say that the light of the flares, cool and hospitable, had kept him on. Yu~giri and two friends came immediately.

“I felt the autumn wind in your flute and had to ask you to join me.”

His touch on the koto was soft and delicate, and Yu~giri's flute, in the banjiki mode,* was wonderfully resonant. Kashiwagi could not be persuaded to sing for them.

“You must not keep us waiting.”

His brother, less shy, sang a strain and repeated it, keeping time with his fan, and one might have taken the low, rich tones for a bell cricket.+ Kashiwagi was now persuaded to play something on the koto. His touch was very little if at all inferior to his father's.

“I believe there is someone inside with an ear for these things,” said Genji. “I must be abstemious. Old men have a way of saying things they regret when they drink too much.”

Tamakazura was indeed listening, and with complex feelings which the guests, her own brothers, could not have imagined. Kashiwagi was of the two the more strongly drawn to her. Indeed, he seemed in danger of falling in love with her. In his playing, however, there was not the smallest suggestion of disorder.

{The Typhoon}