36

Yu~giri could think of nothing to do. The princess's hostility quite baffled him.

Still with her father, Kumoinokari was more and more unhappy.

Rumors reached Koremitsu's daughter, who thought of the haughty disdain with which Kumoinokari had treated her in other years. Kumoinokari had found her equal this time! Koremitsu's daughter had written occasionally and now got off a note.

“The gloom I would know were I among those who matter

I see from afar. I weep in sympathy.”

A bit impertinent, thought Kumoinokari. But she was lonely and bored, and here, if not of the most satisfying kind, was sympathy. She sent off an answer.

“Many unhappy marriages I have seen,

And never felt them as I feel my own.”

It seemed honest and unaffected. The other lady had been the sole and secret object of Yu~giri's attentions in the days when Kumoinokari was refusing him. Though he had turned away from her after his marriage, she had borne several of his children. Kumoinokari was the mother of his first, third, fifth, and sixth sons and second, fourth, and fifth daughters; the other lady, of his first, third, and sixth daughters and second and fourth sons.* They were all fine children, healthy and pretty, but Koremitsu's grandchildren were perhaps the brightest and prettiest. The lady of the orange blossoms had been given the third daughter and second son to rear, and they had the whole of her attention. Genji had become very much attached to them.

Yu~giri's affairs, one is told, were very complicated indeed.

{The Rites}