19

What uncommon stubbornness! The thought of it rankled all the way back to the city. Though the autumn skies were sad, the moon, near full, saw him safely past Mount Ogura.+ The princess's Ichijo~ mansion wore an air of neglect and disrepair. The southwest corner of the garden wall had collapsed. The shutters were drawn and the grounds were deserted save for the moon, which had quite taken possession of the garden waters. He thought how Kashiwagi's flute would have echoed through these same grounds on such a night.

“No shadows now of them whom once I knew.

Only the autumn moon to guard the waters.”

Back at Sanjo~ he gazed up at the moon as if his soul had abandoned him and gone wandering through the skies.

“Never saw anything like it,” said one of the women. “He always used to be so well behaved.”

Kumoinokari was very unhappy indeed. He seemed to have lost his head completely. Perhaps he had been observing the ladies at Rokujo~, long used to this sort of thing, and had concluded that she was worse than uninteresting. Well, it might be that his dissatisfaction should be directed at himself. Life might have been better for her if he had been a Genji. Everyone seemed to agree that she was married to a model of decorum and that her marriage had been ordained by the happiest fates. And was it to end in scandal?