7

The rooms were swept, things put away, carriages drawn up. Among the outrunners were numbers of medium-ranking courtiers. Niou had wanted desperately to come for her himself. Since unnecessary display was to be avoided, however, he ordered that the procession be a quiet one, and, intensely impatient, awaited her at Nijo~. Kaoru too had sent retainers in large numbers. Niou had taken care of the broader plans and Kaoru of all the small and intimate details. Nakanokimi's women joined the men from the city in warning her that it would soon be dark. Utterly confused, scarcely knowing in which direction the city lay, she finally got into a carriage. She was all alone, and defenseless.

Beside her, a woman called Tayu~ was smiling happily.

“You have lived to come upon these joyous days,

And are you not glad Old Gloomy* did not get you?”

Nakanokimi was not pleased. What a vast difference, she thought, between this person and the nun Bennokimi.

Another woman had a poem ready:

“We do not forget to look back at one now gone;

But this day, of all, our hearts must look ahead.”

Both of them had long been in service at Uji, and both had seemed fond of Oigimi. And now they had left her behind. The very fact that they refrained from mentioning her name added to Nakanokimi's bitterness and sorrow. She did not answer.

The road was long and it led through precipitous mountains. She had been deeply resentful of Niou's neglect, but now she began to see why his visits had been infrequent. The bright half-moon was softened and made more mysteriously beautiful by a mist. Unaccustomed to travel, alone with her thoughts, she was soon exhausted.

“The moon comes forth from the mountain upon a world

That offers no home. It goes again to the mountain.”

The future was too uncertain. What would become of her if anything in this precarious balance should change? She longed to return to days when, she knew now, she had been very silly to feel sorry for herself.