13

There were frequent messages from To~ no Chu~jo~, who always did the right thing on sad occasions and who was honestly saddened that such loveliness should have passed so swiftly. His sister, Yu~giri's mother, had died at just this time of the year, and so many of the people who had sent condolences then had themselves died since. There was so very little time between the first and 1ast.* He gazed out into the gathering darkness and presently set down his thoughts in a long and moving letter which he had delivered to Genji by one of his sons and which contained this poem:

“It is as if that autumn had come again

And tears for the one were falling on tears for the other.”

This was Genji's answer:

“The dews of now are the dews of long ago,

And autumn is always the saddest time of all.”

“It is very kind of you to write so often,” he added, not wanting his perceptive friend to guess how thoroughly the loss had undone him. He wore darker mourning than the gray weeds of that other autumn.+