10

He hurried off in the evening. He was always grumbling, for his wife paid little attention to his clothes, that nothing fitted or looked right, and indeed he was a rather strange sight. Not having a change of court dress at hand, he was sprinkled with holes from the hot ashes and even his underrobes smelled ominously of smoke. Tamakazura would not be pleased at this too clear evidence of his wife's fiery ways. He changed underrobes and had another bath and otherwise did what he could for himself.

Moku perfumed the new robes. A sleeve over her face, she whispered:

“Alone with thoughts which are too much for her,

She has let unquenchable embers do their work.”

And she added: “You are so unlike your old self that not even we underlings can watch in silence.”

The eyebrows over the sleeve were very pretty, but he was asking himself, rather unfeelingly, one must say, how such a woman could ever have interested him.

“These dread events so fill me with rage and regret

That I too choke from the fumes that rise within me.

“I will be left with nowhere to turn if word of them gets out.” Sighing, he departed.

He thought that Tamakazura had improved enormously in the one night he had been away. He could not divide his affections. He stayed with her for several days, hoping to forget the disturbances at home and fearful of incidents that might damage his name yet further. The exorcists continued to be busy, he heard, and malign spirits emerged noisily from the lady one after another. On occasional trips home he avoided her rooms and saw his children, a daughter twelve or thirteen and two younger sons, in another part of the house. He had seen less and less of his wife in recent years, but her position had not until now been challenged. Her women were desolate at the thought that the final break was approaching.