Page:A Wreath of Cloud.djvu/282

278 were made on Genji’s side, he was quite willing to consider the possibility of such a match. As to what the young man’s feelings in the matter might be—he did not give the question a moment’s thought, having always regarded Yūgiri merely as a nuisance.

One day when he had been reflecting upon this problem more earnestly than usual, Tō no Chūjō determined to thresh the matter out with the girl herself, and taking Kōbai with him he went straight to her room. It so happened that Kumoi had fallen asleep. She was lying, a small and fragile figure, with only a single wrap of thin diaphanous stuff thrown carelessly across her. It was certainly a pleasure on such a day to see any one looking so delightfully cool! The delicate outline of her bare limbs showed plainly beneath the light wrap which covered her. She lay pillowed on one outstretched arm, her fan still in her hand. Her loosened hair fell all about her, and though it was not remarkably thick or long, there was something particularly agreeable in its texture and in the lines it made as it hung across her face. Her gentlewomen were also reposing, but at some distance away, in the room which opened out behind her curtained dais, so that they did not wake in time, and it was only when Tō no Chūjō himself rustled impatiently with his fan that she slowly raised her head and turned upon him a bewildered gaze. Her beauty, enhanced by the flush of sleep, could not but impress a father’s heart, and Tō no Chūjō looked at her with a pride which his subsequent words by no means betrayed. ‘I have told you often before,’ he said, ‘that even to be caught dozing in your seat is a thing a girl of your age ought to be ashamed of; and here I find you going to bed in broad daylight … you really must be a little more careful. I cannot imagine how you could be so foolish as to allow all your gentlewomen to desert you in