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308 or appearance. But one feels, I think, that she is all the while making judgments, which if they ever came to the surface, would seem oddly at variance with the mild femininity of her outward manner….’ With these words Genji re-appeared from behind the curtains. The look of complete detachment with which Yūgiri imagined he met his father’s gaze was perhaps not so successfully assumed as the boy supposed; for Genji suddenly halted and returning to the daïs whispered to Murasaki something about the door which had been left unfastened yesterday morning. ‘No, I am sure he didn’t,’ answered Murasaki indignantly. ‘If he had come along the corridor my people would have noticed. They never heard a sound….’ ‘Very queer, all the same,’ murmured Genji to himself as he left the room. Yūgiri now noticed that a group of gentlemen was waiting for him at the end of the cross-gallery, and he hastened to meet them. He tried to join in their conversation and even in their laughter; but he was feeling in no mood for society, and little as his friends expected of him in the way of gaiety, they found him on this occasion more obdurately low-spirited than ever before.

Soon however his father returned and carried him off to the Eastern Wing. They found the gentlewomen of this quarter engaged in making preparations to meet the sudden cold. A number of grey-haired old ladies were cutting out and stitching, while the young girls were busy hanging out quilts and winter cloaks over lacquered clothes-frames. They had just beaten and pulled a very handsome dark-red underrobe, a garment of magnificent colour, certainly unsurpassed as an example of modern dyeing—and were spreading it out to air. ‘Why, Yūgiri,’ said Genji, ‘that is your coat, is it not? I suppose you would have been wearing it at the Emperor’s Chrysanthemum Feast; but of course