Page:The Sacred Tree (Waley 1926).pdf/115

Rh that she had many reasons for dreading his absence and it seemed unfeeling not to pay her one more visit before he left. But if he spent another evening away from his palace Murasaki would be very disappointed, and he therefore did not start till late in the night. He went first to the room of Princess Reikeiden, who was flattered and delighted beyond measure that hers should be the only house to which he paid the honour of a farewell visit. But what passed between them was not of sufficient interest to be recorded. He remembered that it was only through his help and protection that she had managed to overcome the difficulties and anxieties of the last few years. Now matters would go from bad to worse. In the house nothing stirred. The moon had risen and now shimmered faintly through the clouds. The lake in front of the building was large and wild, and dense thickets of mountain-trees surrounded it. He was just thinking that there could hardly in all the world be a lovelier, stranger place, when he remembered the rocky shore of Suma,—a thousand times more forbidding, more inaccessible!

The younger sister had quite made up her mind that Genji was going to leave the house without visiting her, and she was all the more surprised and delighted when at last, more lovely than ever by moonlight and in the grave simplicity of his exile’s dress, he stole into her room. At once she crept towards the window and they stood together gazing at the moonlight. They talked for a while, and found to their astonishment that it was nearly day. ‘How short the night has been,’ said Genji. ‘Yet even such a hasty meeting as this may never be ours again. Why did I not know you better in all those years when it would have been so easy to meet? Never have such misfortunes befallen an innocent man before, nor ever will they again. I go from torment to torment. Listen…’ and he was