14

The sadness of these lives poured in upon him, of the isolation enforced by heavy mountain mists. They were lives into which the whole gamut of sorrows had entered, he thought, and he thought too that he understood why they preferred to live in seclusion.

“How very sad.

“In the dawn I cannot see the path I took

To find Oyama of the Pines in mist.” *

He turned away, and yet hesitated. Even ladies who saw the great gentlemen of the capital every day would have found him remarkable, and he quite dazzled these rustic maids. Oigimi, knowing that it would be too much to ask one of them to deliver it for her, offered a reply, her voice soft and shy as before, and with a hint of a sigh in it.

“Our mountain path, enshrouded whatever the season,

Is now closed off by the deeper mist of autumn.”

The scene itself need not have detained him, but these evidences of loneliness made him reluctant to leave. Presently, uncomfortable at the thought of being seen in broad daylight, he went to the west veranda, where a place had been prepared for him, and looked out over the river.

“To have spoken so few words and to have had so few in return,” he said as he left the princesses' wing of the house, “makes it certain that I shall have much to think about. Perhaps when we are better acquainted I can tell you of it. In the meantime, I shall say only that if you think me no different from most young men, and you do seem to, then your judgment in such matters is not what I would have hoped it to be.”

His men had become expert at presiding over the weirs. “Listen to all the shouting,” said one of them. “And they don't seem to be exactly boasting over what they've caught. The fish+ are not cooperating.”

Strange, battered little boats, piled high with brush and wattles, made their way up and down the river, each boatman pursuing his own sad, small livelihood at the uncertain mercy of the waters. “It is the same with all of us,” thought Kaoru to himself. “Am I to boast that I am safe from the flood, calm and secure in a jeweled mansion?”

Asking for brush and ink, he got off a note to Oigimi: “It is not hard to guess the sad thoughts that must be yours.

“Wet are my sleeves as the oars that work these shallows,

For my heart knows the heart of the lady at the bridge.” #

He sent it in through the guard of the night before. Red from the cold, the man presently returned with an answer. The princess was not proud of the paper, perfumed in a very undistinguished way, but speed seemed the first consideration.

“I have wet sleeves, and indeed my whole being is at the mercy of the waters.

“With sodden sleeves the boatman plies the river.

So too these sleeves of mine, at morn, at night.”

The writing was confident and dignified. He had not been able to detect a flaw in the lady. But here were these people rushing him on, telling him that his carriage had arrived from the city.

He called the guard aside. “I shall most certainly come again when His Highness has finished his retreat.” Changing to court dress that had come with the carriage, he gave his wet traveling clothes to the man.