30

Nostalgia for Uji was mounting again. The long intervals between his visits somehow made the past withdraw more rapidly into the distance. Toward the end of the Ninth Month he paid a visit. In the wail of the winds, the Uji house had only the rushing waters for company. The human presence was scarcely to be detected. His eyes clouded over at the infinite sadness of the place. Asking for Bennokimi, he was received at a dark-blue curtain drawn before her rooms.

“I am much honored by this visit. I am even older and uglier than when last you saw me and would be ashamed to face you.” She remained behind her curtains.

“I can guess how sad life is for you. I have come because only you understand certain things I long to talk about.” There were tears in his eyes. “How quickly time does go by?”

The old woman was weeping quite openly. “Here we are again at the time of the year when my older lady was suffering so. There is no particular season for weeping, of course, but it is the autumn wind that hurts most. And I have had dim rumors that things have turned out for my younger lady as my older lady feared they would—that her relations with the prince are not good. One must go on worrying, it seems.”

“I suppose that everything arranges itself in the end, if only you live long enough, but I cannot help blaming myself that her last days were so unsettled. But you speak of the prince's recent behavior. There is nothing in the least unusual about it, you know. It is exactly what one would have expected. He has taken another wife, but that is no cause for your lady to be upset. No, I fear that my own sorrow is the greater. I know that the day will come when I too will vanish into the skies.'The dew falls soon and late'*—but that knowledge does not make the wait any easier.”