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202 to take these proceedings seriously. I found them romping together, instead of saying their prayers. You and I will have to hold a service of our own.’ So saying he recited the prayer, not without certain additions which showed that he took the business only a trifle more seriously than the ladies whom he had just criticized. He then handed her the poem: ‘May the course of our love be clear as the waters of yonder lake, from which, in the spring sunshine, the last clot of ice has melted away.’ To this she answered: ‘On the bright mirror of these waters I see stretched out the cloudless years love holds for us in store.’ Then (as how many times before!) Genji began telling her that, whatever was reported of him or whatever she herself observed, she need never have any anxiety. And he protested, in the most violent and impressive terms, that his passion for her underlay all that he felt or did, and could not be altered by any passing interest or fancy. She was for the moment convinced, and accepted his protestations ungrudgingly.

Besides being the third of the year it was also the Day of the Rat and therefore as fine an occasion for prayers and resolutions as could possibly have been found.

His next visit was to the little girl from Akashi. He found her maids and page-boys playing New Year games on the mound in front of her windows, and pulling up the dwarf pine-trees, an occupation in which they seemed to take a boundless delight. The little princess’s rooms were full of sweetmeat boxes and hampers, all of them presents from her mother. To one toy, a little nightingale perched upon a sprig of the five-leafed pine, was fastened a plaintive message: ‘In my home the nightingale’s voice I never hear, …’ and with it the poem:—