Page:A Wreath of Cloud.djvu/68

64 tribes of insects that were wasting their shrill song in the solitude of lanes and fields. All this I did that I might be able to enjoy these things in the company of my friends, among whom you are one. Pray tell me then, to which season do you find that your preference inclines?’ She thought this a very difficult form of conversation; but politeness demanded some sort of reply and she said timidly: ‘But you have just said you can never yourself remember when it was you saw or heard the thing that pleased you most. How can you expect me to have a better memory? However, difficult as it is to decide, I think I agree with the poet who found the dusk of an autumn evening “strangest and loveliest thing of all.” Perhaps I am more easily moved at such moments because, you know, it was at just such a time…’ Her voice died away, and knowing well indeed what was in her mind Genji answered tenderly with the verse: ‘The world knows it not; but to you, oh Autumn, I confess it: your wind at night-fall stabs deep into my heart.’ ‘Sometimes I am near to thinking that I can hold out no longer,’ he added. To such words as these she was by no means bound to reply and even thought it best to pretend that she had not understood. This however had the effect of leading him on to be a little more explicit; and matters would surely have come a good deal further had she not at once shown in the most unmistakable manner her horror at the sentiments which he was beginning to profess. Suddenly he pulled himself up. He had been behaving with a childish lack of restraint. How fortunate that she at least had shown some sense! He felt very much cast down; but neither his sighs nor his languishing airs had any effect upon her. He saw that she was making as though to steal quietly and unobtrusively