7

In terror through much of the night, Tamakazura had slept late and was just now at her morning toilet. Genji silenced his men and came softly up beside her. Screens and other furnishings were stacked untidily in a corner and the rooms were in considerable disarray. The sunlight streamed in upon almost startlingly fresh beauty. Genji sat down to make his inquiries, and it annoyed her that he managed to give even them a suggestive note.

“Your behavior,” she said, “has been such that I rather hoped last night to be carried off by the wind.”

Genji was amused. “How rash of you—though I have no doubt that you had a particular destination in mind. So I displease you more and more all the time, do I? Well, that is as it should be.”

Her thoughts exactly. She too had to smile, a glowing smile that was very lovely indeed. A glow like a ho~zuki berry* came through rich strands of hair. If he had been searching for faults, he might have pointed out that she smiled too broadly; but it was a very small fault.

Waiting through this apparently intimate $$ tete-a-tete, Yu~giri caught sight of a somewhat disarranged curtain behind the corner blinds. Raising it over the frame, he found that he had a clear view deep into the room. He was rather startled at what he saw. They were father and daughter, to be sure, but it was not as if she were an infant for Genji to take in his arms, as he seemed about to do. Though on ready alert lest he be detected, Yu~giri was spellbound. The girl turned away and sought to hide behind a pillar, and as Genji pulled her towards him her hair streamed over her face, hiding it from Yu~giri's view. Though obviously very uncomfortable, she let him have his way. They seemed on very intimate terms indeed. Yu~giri was a little shocked and more than a little puzzled. Genji knew all about women, there could be no question of that. Perhaps because he had not had her with him to fret and worry over since girlhood it was natural that he should feel certain amorous impulses towards her. It was natural, but also repellent. Yu~giri felt somehow ashamed, as if it were in a measure his responsibility. She was a half sister and not a full sister and he saw that he could himself be tempted. She was very tempting. She was not perhaps the equal of the other lady of whom he had recently had a glimpse, but she brought a smile of pleasure all the same. She would not have seemed in hopeless competition with Murasaki. He thought of a rich profusion of yamabuki sparkling with dew in the evening twilight. The image was of spring and not autumn, of course, but it was the one that came to him all the same. Indeed she might be thought even more beautiful than the yamabuki, which after all has its ragged edges and untidy stamens.

They seemed to be talking in whispers, unaware, of course, that they were being observed.

Suddenly very serious, Genji stood up. He softly repeated a poem which the girl had recited in tones too low for Yu~giri to hear:

“The tempest blows, the maiden flower has fears

That the time has come for it to fade and die.”

It brought both revulsion and fascination. But he could stay no longer.

He hoped he had misunderstood his father's answer:

“If it gives itself up to the dew beneath the tree,

It need not fear, the maiden flower, the winds.

“It should look to the example of the pliant bamboo.”