26

On a quiet day of heavy winter rains he went to call on his sister, the First Princess. She and a few attendants had been looking over a collection of paintings. He addressed her through a curtain. She was among the famous beauties of the day, and yet she preserved a winning girlishness that made him ask whether her rival was to be found anywhere. There was, to be sure, the daughter of the Reizei emperor, her father's joy and pride. What he had heard of her secluded life suggested again a most compelling beauty, but he had no way of approaching her. And there was his own princess at Uji, loveliness itself. With each thought of her the longing grew. By way of distraction he picked up several of the pictures that lay scattered about. They had been painted, and very skillfully, to appeal to womanly tastes.* There was, for instance, a lovelorn gentleman, and there was a tasteful mountain villa, and there were numbers of other scenes that seemed to have interested the artists. Several called his own circumstances

to mind, and he thought of asking his sister for a few to send to Uji. The illustration for the scene from _Tales of Ise_ in which the hero gives his sister a koto lesson+ brought him closer to the curtain.

“'A pity indeed if the grasses so sweet, so inviting,'“ he whispered, and one may wonder what he had in mind.” I gather that in those days brother and sister did not have to talk through curtains. You are very remote.”

She asked what picture he was referring to. He rolled it up and pushed it under the curtain, and as she bent to look at it her hair was swept aside and he caught a brief and partial glimpse of her profile. It delighted him. He found himself wishing that she were not his sister. A verse came to his lips:

“I do not propose to sleep among the young grasses,

But ensnared in them I must confess to be.”

Her attendants had withdrawn in embarrassment. A most curious thing to say, thought the princess herself. She did not answer. Her manifest and quite proper discomfort reminded him that the recipient of the old poem had replied in a somewhat inviting manner.#

Murasaki had been fondest of these two, the First Princess and Niou, and of all the royal children they had been the closest. The empress had been especially careful with this oldest daughter, and if anyone among her attendants, who were numerous and all from the best families, was seen to have the slightest flaw, she was very quickly made to feel unwanted.

The volatile Niou moved from one liaison to the next as interesting new ladies appeared, but through them all his heart was with the princess at Uji. He was a lazy correspondent, however, and so the days went by.