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Some of his attendants had become familiar with the young women of the house. “I hear they have put a stop to Prince Niou's wanderings?” said one of them, idly passing the time of day.” They have shut him up in the palace. And it seems that they have arranged a match between him and the minister's young daughter. Her family has wanted it for years, and so no one will be inconvenienced. The talk is that they'll be married before the end of the year. Of course he isn't all that enthusiastic. He goes on having little affairs with the ladies-in-waiting. His mother and father haven't had much luck at reforming him. Now if you want a real contrast look at our own master for a minute or two. So serious and self-contained —so queer, really, some might say. People are all agog at his trips here. Some say they're the first real sign of human feeling he has ever shown.”

“That is what he told me.” The woman was quick to pass all this on to her colleagues, and it soon reached the princesses, and did nothing to assuage their distress. Such was the pass they had come to, said Oigimi to herself. It was the end. He had only wanted amusement while he got ready to marry a well-placed lady. With one eye on Kaoru, he had contrived to put together certain words of affection. Beyond thinking further about this duplicity, convinced that the world no longer had a place for her, she lay weeping helplessly. She no longer wished to live. Hers were not women of such rank that she need feel any constraint before them, but the thought of what they would now be saying quite revolted her. She tried to pretend that she had not heard this new report. Her sister was with her, napping as people will who have “thoughts of things.” * What a dear little creature she was, her long hair flowing over the arm on which her head was pillowed—what remarkable grace and beauty. Oigimi thought of her father and his last admonitions. He would not be in hell of course—but even if he was, could he not summon them to his side? It was too cruel, that he should leave them in these sad straits, refusing to come to them even in a dream.

The evening was dark and rainy and the wind in the trees was a sigh of utter loneliness For all her worries Oigimi was a figure of great distinction as she sat leaning against an armrest and thinking of what had been and what was to be. Her hair had long gone untended, and yet not a strand was in disarray as it flowed down over a white robe. The pallor from days of illness gave to her features a certain cast of depth and mystery. The eyes and forehead as she sat gazing out into the dusk—one would have longed to show them to the world of high taste, to connoisseurs of the beautiful.

Nakanokimi started up at a particularly harsh gust of wind. Her robes were a lively combination of yellow and rose,+ and her face had a lively glow, a luster as of having been freshly tinted over. There was no trace of worry upon it.

“I dreamed of Father. I saw him for just a second, standing over there. He seemed upset.”

“I have wanted so to see him, even in a dream,” said Oigimi, in a new access of grief,” and I have not once dreamed of him.”

Both of the girls were in tears. The fact that he had been so much on her mind recently, thought Oigimi, perhaps meant that he was wandering in some limbo.* She longed to go to him, wherever he was—not that such a sinful one as she would be permitted to. And so her worries ran on into the other world. There was an incense, it was said, which men of a foreign land had used to bring back the dead.+ If only she might have a stick of it!