Page:The Sacred Tree (Waley 1926).pdf/114

108 by the Government are expected to creep about miserably in the dark, and if they try to make themselves happy and comfortable it is considered very wicked. I have not of course done anything wrong, but my misfortune must certainly be due to some sin in a previous life, and I am sure that if I did anything so unusual as to take my lady into exile with me, fate would find some yet more cruel way to punish me for the presumption.’

He then lay down and slept till noon. Later in the day his half-brother Prince Sochi no Miya and Tō no Chūjō called and offered to help him dress. He reminded them that he had resigned his rank and they brought him a cloak of plain silk without any crest or badge. This costume had an informal air which became him better than they had expected. When he went to the mirror that his servants might do his hair he could not help noticing how thin his face had lately grown, and he said ‘What a fright I look! Can I really be such a skeleton as this? It is indeed a bad business if I am.’ Murasaki, her eyes full of tears, came and peeped at the mirror. To distract her he recited the poem: ‘Though I wander in strange lands and far away, in this mirror let me leave my image, that it may never quit your side.’ ‘That, yes, even so little as that, would comfort me, if indeed this mirror might hold the image of your distant face.’ So she answered, and without another word sank into a seat behind the roof-pillar, that her tears might not be seen. His heart went out to her, and he felt at this moment that among all the women he had known she was indeed the most adorable.

His step-brother now fell to reminding him of scenes in their common childhood, and it was already growing dark when he left Genji’s room. The lady at the ‘village of falling flowers’ had written to him constantly since she heard the news of his approaching departure. He knew