21

“You might tell her, if it would not be too much trouble, that these feelings have been with me for some years, and that it would be wrong of her to think herself the victim of a sudden whim. But I tend to be wrapped up in myself, and handle these matters clumsily.”

And he went out.

The governor's wife thought him splendid, indeed quite flawless. Bennokimi had on more than one occasion spoken of a possibility which she had dismissed as altogether too remote; but now she thought that one could easily wait a whole year to bathe in the light of such a star. She was determined that her daughter go to no ordinary man; and she was aghast at her want of discrimination (for she had long kept company with rough East Country people) in thinking the lieutenant acceptable. As for the perfume left at the cypress pillar and upon the cushion, she despaired of finding words to describe it.

And those who knew him well had to praise him afresh. “The good books tell us that a strong perfume is one of the real signs of grace. It must be true. There's that sandalwood from Oxhead Mountain (awful name) that the Lotus Sutra makes so much of.* The first whiff of him and you know what it means. He's been at his books and beads ever since he was a little boy.”

And another: “What I'd like to know is what he was up to in other lives to deserve it all.”

The governor's wife listened smiling.