Page:A Wreath of Cloud.djvu/207

Rh Genji read the poem and was touched by it; for he knew that only under the stress of great emotion would she have allowed this note of sadness to tinge a New Year poem. ‘Come, little nightingale!’ he said to the child, ‘you must make haste with your answer; it would be heartless indeed if in the quarter whence these pretty things come you were ungenerous with your spring-time notes!’ and taking his own ink-stone from a servant who was standing by, he prepared it for her and made her write. She looked so charming while she did this that he found himself envying those who spent all day in attendance upon her, and he felt that to have deprived the Lady of Akashi year after year of so great a joy was a crime for which he would never be able to forgive himself. He looked to see what she had written. ‘Though years be spent asunder, not lightly can the nightingale forget the tree where first it nested and was taught to sing.’ The flatness of the verse had at least this much to recommend it—the mother would know for certain that the poem had been written without grown-up assistance!

The Summer Quarters were not looking their best; indeed at this time of year they could hardly be expected not to wear a somewhat uninteresting air. As he looked about him he could see no object that was evidence of any very pronounced taste or proclivity; the arrangements betokened, rather, a general discrimination and good-breeding. For many years past his affection for her had remained at exactly the same pitch, never flagging in the slightest degree, and at the same time never tempting him