31

He was indeed pulled in two directions. Finally deciding that it would be cruel to leave, he stayed the night. Murasaki continued to be very much on his mind. He went to bed after a light supper.

He was up early, thinking to be on his way while it was still cool.

“I left my fan somewhere. This one is not much good.” He searched through her sitting room, where he had had his nap the day before.

He saw a corner of pale-green tissue paper at the edge of a slightly disarranged quilt. Casually he took it up. It was a note in a man's hand. Delicately perfumed, it somehow had the look of a rather significant document. There were two sheets of paper covered with very small writing. The hand was without question Kashiwagi's.

The woman who opened the mirror for him paid little attention. It would of course be a letter he had every right to see. But Kojiju~ noted with horror that it was the same color as Kashiwagi's of the day before. She quite forgot about breakfast. It could not be. Nothing so awful could have been permitted to happen. Her lady absolutely _must_ have hidden it.

The princess was still sleeping soundly. What a child she was, thought Genji, not without a certain contempt. Supposing someone else had found the letter. That was the thing: the heedlessness that had troubled him all along.

He had left and the other women were some distance away. “And what did you do with the young gentleman's letter?” asked Kojiju~. “His Lordship was reading a letter that was very much the same color.”

The princess collapsed in helpless weeping.

Kojiju~ was sorry for her, of course, but shocked and angry too. “Really, my lady—where _did_ you put it? There were others around and I went off because I did not want him to think we were conspiring. That was how _I_ felt. And you had time before he came in. Surely you hid it?”

“He came in on me while I was reading it. I didn't have time. I slipped it under something and forgot about it.”

Speechless, Kojiju~ went to look for the letter. It was of course nowhere to be found.

“How perfectly, impossibly awful. The young gentleman was terrified of His Lordship, terrified that the smallest word might reach him. And now this has happened, and in no time at all. You are such a child, my lady. You let him see you, and he could not forget you however many years went by, and came begging to me. But that we should lose control of things so completely—it just did not seem possible. Nothing could be worse for either of you.”

She did not mince words. The princess was too good-natured and still too much of a child to argue back. Her tears flowed on.

She quite lost her appetite. Her women thought Genji cruel and un-feeling. “She is so extremely unwell, and he ignores her. He gives all his attention to a lady who has quite recovered.”