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He must act. The rumors were not at all surprising, and he was beginning to feel uncomfortable before these women.

“Let us consider another possibility,” he said to Kosho~sho~. “Let us make it seem that she has accepted me, even though we are guilty of deception. People must be very curious to know whether she has or has not. And think how much worse the damage would be from her point of view if I were to stop coming. This grim determination is both sad and foolish.”

Kosho~sho~ agreed, and could not hold out against so ill-used and so estimable a gentleman. The closet had a back door through which servants were admitted. She led him to it.

The princess was angry and bewildered, and helpless. Such was hu-man nature, it appeared. No doubt she could expect even worse in the future.

Sometimes eloquently and sometimes jokingly, he sought to teach her the natural and, he should have thought, universally recognized ways of the world. But she was very angry and very sorry for herself.

“You have put me in my place. I only wish I had been cool enough to see from the outset what an unlikely affection it was. But here we are. What good is your proud name now? Forget about it, please, and accept what must be. One hears of people who in desperation throw themselves into the deep. Think of it as a simile: my love is a deep pool into which you may throw yourself.”

She sat with her face in her hands and a singlet pulled over her head and bowed shoulders. Far from being “proud,” she was utterly forlorn, capable only of weeping aloud. He looked at her in wonderment, unable to do more. It was a fine predicament. Why did she so dislike him? They had long passed the point at which an ordinary woman would have given in, however much she disliked a man. The princess was as unyielding as a rock or a tree. He had heard that these antipathies are sometimes formed in other lives. Might it be so with the princess?

He thought of Kumoinokari, for whom it would be a lonely night, and all their years together. Their marriage had been a remarkably peaceful one, and they had been nearer than most husbands and wives. And now this predicament, which he could so easily have avoided. He gave up trying to prevail upon the princess and spent the night with his sighs.

To flee from this ridiculous situation would only be to make it worse. He spent the day quietly at Ichijo~.

What brazen impudence, the princess was thinking. She wished she had never seen him. And he for his part, half angry and half apologetic, was thinking what a very silly child she was.