20

He had, however—and it seemed odd—acquired a liking for that west gallery, where he had espied the First Princess. Though she spent her nights with her mother, her women were assembled there, enjoying music and gossip. He interrupted a gentle strain upon a koto.

“Such music makes me impatient to see the musician.” #

He had caught them by surprise, but they left the blinds slightly raised. One of them came forward.

“And is there an elder brother for one to resemble?” It was Chu~jo~'s voice.

“That I do not know,” he answered brightly, “but there _is_ a maternal uncle loitering about. Your lady is with her mother, I suppose? And how does she spend these days of freedom from palace restraints?” He was disappointed to find her away.

“Oh, she's not so very busy whether she is here or whether she is there. You have caught us at the sort of thing we do.”

For them life seemed to be very interesting. He sighed. Then, fearing that the sigh might have been detected, he pulled a Japanese koto towards him, and, making use of the scale on which one of the women had been at practice, played the opening bars of a song. It was not unsuccessful, since minor scales are thought especially suited to the moods of autumn; but he broke off before he had finished. The women had been listening with great interest and half wished he had not begun at all.

His mother was a princess too, and was she so inferior to Niou's eldest sister? The First Princess's mother had been named empress, and his own grandmother had not been so honored, and that was the whole of the difference. Both of them, his mother and the princess, were the muchloved daughters of emperors. Yet there was something ineffably different about the princess. A remarkable place, that Akashi coast, where her mother had been born. He must go someday for a look at it. He could hardly say that fate had slighted him, for the Second Princess was his. Yet how much kinder if it had given him the First Princess too! He was of course asking the impossible.