2

The women who had been longest in attendance on Murasaki still wore dark mourning, and acceptance and resignation still eluded them. Their one real comfort was that Genji had not gone back to Rokujo~. He was still here at Nijo~, for them to serve. Although he had had no serious affairs with any of them, he had favored one and another from time to time. He might have been expected, in his loneliness, to favor them more warmly now, but the old desires seemed to have left him. Even the women on night duty slept outside his curtains. Sometimes, to break the tedium, he would talk of the old years. He would remember, now that romantic affairs meant so little to him, how hurt Murasaki had been by involvements of no importance at all. Why had he permitted himself even the trivial sort of dalliance for which he had felt no need to apologize? Murasaki had been too astute not to guess his real intentions; and yet, though she had been quick to recover from fits of jealousy which were never violent in any event, the fact was that she had suffered. Each little incident came back, until he felt that he had no room in his heart for them all. Sometimes a woman would comment briefly on an incident to which she had been witness, for there were women still with him who had seen everything.

Murasaki had given not the smallest hint of resentment when the Third Princess had come into the house. He had known all the same that she was upset, and he had been deeply upset in his turn. He remembered the snowy morning, a morning of dark, roiling clouds, when he had been kept waiting outside her rooms until he was almost frozen. She had re-ceived him quietly and affectionately and tried to hide her damp sleeves. All through the wakeful nights he thought of her courage and strength and longed to have them with him again, even in a dream.

“Just see what a snow we have had!” One of the women seemed to be returning to her own room. It was snowy dawn, just as then, and he was alone. That was the tragic difference.

“The snow will soon have left this gloomy world.

My days must yet go on, an aimless drifting.”