10

Kaoru's letters, on the other hand, were of such an earnest nature that she answered them freely. He came calling one day, even before the period of deepest mourning was over. Approaching the lower part of the east room,* where the princesses were still in mourning, he summoned Bennokimi. Wanderers in darkness, they found this sudden burst of light quite blinding. Their own somber garments were too sharp a contrast. They were unable to send out an answer.

“Do they have to go on treating me like a stranger? Have they com-pletely forgotten their father's last wishes? The most ordinary sort of conversation, now and then, would be such a pleasure. I have not mastered the methods of suitors and it does not seem at all natural to have to use a messenger.”

“We have lived on, as you see,” Oigimi finally managed to send back, “although I do not remember that anyone asked our wishes. It has been one long nightmare. I doubt if our wishes matter much more even now. Everything tells us to stay out of the light, and I must ask you not to ask the impossible.”

“You are being much too conservative. If you were to come marching gaily out into the sunlight or the moonlight of your own free will, now— but you are only creating difficulties. Acquaint me with the smallest particle of what you are thinking and, who knows, I might have a small bit of comfort to offer.”

“How nice,” said the women of the house. “Here you are floundering and helpless, and here he is trying to help you.”

Oigimi, despite her protestations, was recovering from her grief. She remembered his repeated kindnesses (though one might have said that any good friend would have done as much), and she remembered how, over the years, he had made his way through the high grasses to this distant moor. She moved a little nearer. In the gentlest and friendliest way possible, he told how he had felt for them in their grief, and how he had made certain promises to their father. There was nothing insistent in his manner, and she felt neither constraint nor apprehension. Yet he was not, after all, a real intimate; and now, to have him hear her voice—and her thoughts were further confused by the memory of how, over the weeks, she had come to look to him vaguely for support—no, it was still too painful. She was unable to speak. From what little he had heard he knew that she had scarcely begun to pull herself from her grief, and pity welled up afresh. It was a sad figure that he now caught a glimpse of through a gap in the curtains. It suggested all too poignantly the unrelieved gloom of her days; and he thought of the figure he had seen faintly in the autumn dawn.

As if to himself, he recited a verse:

“The reeds, so sparse and fragile, have changed their color,

To make me think of sleeves that now are black.”

And she replied:

“Upon this sleeve, changed though its color be,

The dew finds refuge; there is no refuge for me. 'The thread from these dark robes of mourning'—” * But she could not go on. Her voice wavered and broke in midsentence, and she withdrew deeper into the room.