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Rh against the dark background of her hair. Her face, suddenly illumined by the cold glare of the distant torches, wore an uneasy and distrustful air. He had risen to go, but still lingered. ‘You should tell your people never to let the flares go out,’ he said. ‘Even in summer, except when there is a moon, it is not wise to leave the garden unlighted. And in Autumn…. I shall feel very uneasy if you do not promise to remember about this. “Did but the torches flickering at your door burn brightly as the fire within my breast, you should not want for light!” ’ And he reminded her of the old song in which the lover asks: ‘How long, like the smouldering watch-fire at the gate, must my desire burn only with an inward flame?’

‘Would that, like the smoke of the watch-fires that mounts and vanishes at random in the empty sky, the smouldering flame of passion could burn itself away!’ So she recited, adding: ‘I do not know what has come over you. Please leave me at once or people will think….’ ‘As you wish,’ he answered, and was stepping into the courtyard, when he heard a sound of music in the wing occupied by the Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers. Some one seemed to be playing the flute to the accompaniment of a Chinese zithern. No doubt Yūgiri was giving a small party. The flute-player could be none other than Tō no Chūjō’s eldest son Kashiwagi; for who else at Court performed with such marvellous delicacy and finish? How pleasant would be the effect, thought Genji, if they would consent to come and give a serenade by the stream-side, in the subdued light of those flickering torches! ‘I long to join you,’ he wrote, ‘but, could you see the pale, watery shadows that the watch-flares are casting here in the garden of the western wing, you would know why I am slow to come….’ He sent this note to Yūgiri, and