5

“Are you saying that you mean to pass one night among the flowers?” said Kashiwagi. “It is a difficult task you assign your guide.”

“The fickle flowers, watched over by the steadfast pine? Please, sir— do not let any hint of the inauspicious creep into the conversation.”

Kashiwagi was satisfied, though he did not think that he had risen to the occasion as wittily as he might have. He had a very high opinion of Yu~giri and would not have wished the affair to end otherwise. With no further misgivings he showed his friend to Kumoinokari's room.

For Yu~giri it was a waking dream. He had waited, long and well. Kumoinokari was very shy but more beautiful than when, all those years before, he had last seen her. He too was satisfied.

“I knew that people were laughing,” he said, “but I let them laugh, and so here we are. Your chief claim to distinction through it all, if I may say so, has been your chilliness. You heard the song your brother was singing, I suppose. It was not kind of him. The fence of rushes—I would have liked to answer with the one about the Kawaguchi Barrier.” *

This, she thought, required comment: “Deplorable.

“So shallow a river, flowing out to sea.

Why did so stout a fence permit it to pass?”

He thought her delightful.

“Shallowness was one, but only one,

Among the traits that helped it pass the barrier.

“The length of the wait has driven me mad, raving mad. At this point I understand nothing.” Intoxication was his excuse for a certain fretful disorderliness. He appeared not to know that dawn was approaching.

The women were very reluctant to disturb him.

“He seems to sleep a confident and untroubled sleep,” said To~ no Chu~jo~.

He did, however, leave before it was full daylight. Even his yawns were handsome.

His note was delivered later in the morning with the usual secrecy. She had trouble answering. The women were poking one another jocularly and the arrival of To~ no Chu~jo~ added to her embarrassment. He glanced at the note.

“Your coldness serves to emphasize my own inadequacy, and makes me feel that the best solution might be to expire.

“Do not reprove me for the dripping sleeves

The whole world sees. I weary of wringing them dry.”

It may have seemed somewhat facile.

“How his writing has improved.” To~ no Chu~jo~ smiled. The old resentments had quite disappeared. “He will be impatient for an answer, my dear.”

But he saw that his presence had an inhibiting effect and withdrew.

Kashiwagi ordered wine and lavish gifts for the messenger, an assis-tant guards commander who was among Yu~giri's most trusted attendants. He was glad that he no longer had to do his work in secret.