Page:A Wreath of Cloud.djvu/239

Rh at last the sky was clearing. The young maples and oak trees in the garden blent their leafage in a marvellous curtain of green. Genji remembered the lines ‘In the fourth month the weather grew clearer and still…’ and thence his thoughts wandered to the girl in the Western Wing. He felt a sudden longing, on this early summer evening, for the sight of something fresh, something fragrant; and without a word to anyone he slipped away to her rooms. He found her practising at her desk in an easy attitude and attire. She was in no way prepared to receive such a visit, and upon his arrival rose to her feet with a blush. Caught thus unawares and informally dressed, she was more like her mother than he had ever seen her before, and he could not help exclaiming: ‘I could not have believed it possible! To-night you are simply Yūgao herself. Of course, I have always noticed the resemblance; but never before has it reached such a point as this. It so happens that Yūgiri is not at all like his mother, and consequently I am apt to forget how complete such resemblances can sometimes be.’

A sprig of orange-blossom was stuck among some fruit that was lying on a tray near by. ‘As the orange-blossom gives its scent unaltered to the sleeve that brushes it, so have you taken on your mother’s beauty, till you and she are one.’ So he recited, adding: ‘Nothing has ever consoled me for her loss, and indeed, though so many years have passed I shall die regretting her as bitterly as at the start. But to-night, when I first caught sight of you, it seemed to me for an instant that she had come back to me again—that the past was only a dream….Bear with me; you cannot conceive what happiness was brought