Page:The Sacred Tree (Waley 1926).pdf/171

Rh “Say, how goes the world with you?” ’ This time he wrote on a very soft thin paper, with great delicacy and care. The appearance of the letter was such that a young girl who did not admire it must needs have been rustic, nay brutish indeed. The lady to whom it was addressed was by no means insensible; but she felt that the writer of it was too far removed from her in rank and influence for any interchange of affection to be thinkable. The discovery that a world existed which was populated by such dazzling creatures, so far from giving her pleasure, merely left her more unhappy and discontented than before. Again she found herself utterly at a loss how to reply, and it was only the persistence of her father which forced her at last to indite the poem: ‘ “How goes the world?” is said to friends. That one whom you have never seen should greet more stiffly, can do small outrage to the feelings of your heart.’ It was written in sharply contrasted light and heavy strokes on a deep-brown paper, in a masterly style which would not have disgraced a lady of the Court. Genji was naturally very pleased; but he did not want it to be reported at the Capital that he had committed himself to a fresh entanglement. He was therefore careful henceforward always to leave several days’ interval between his letters to her. He wrote in fact only when it chanced that the evening hours hung heavy on his hands, or upon the pretext of some particularly beautiful sunrise or other natural effect; at such times in short as he guessed that she might be under the influence of the same impressions as himself. In such a correspondence it seemed to him that there could not be any impropriety. He had heard so much about her pride that he felt sorely tempted to put it to the test. But he remembered that his retainer Yoshikiyo had spoken of her very much as though she were his own property. Should Genji now by any chance succeed where