Page:The Sacred Tree (Waley 1926).pdf/174

168 At Akashi, as frequently happens in autumn, heavy winds were blowing in the bay. Genji began to find the long evenings very monotonous and depressing. Sometimes he would allow the priest to come and talk to him, and in the course of one of these conversations Genji said: ‘I am longing for a little diversion. Could you not manage, without attracting too much attention, to bring your daughter here one day to see me?’ It seemed somehow to be accepted that for Genji to pay a visit to the house on the hill was entirely out of the question. Unfortunately the lady herself was equally averse to making any move. She knew that gentlemen who visited the provinces on Government business would often take up with some wretched peasant girl and, for so long as they happened to be in the district, carry on a purely frivolous affair with her. The Lady of Akashi was convinced that Genji regarded her in just such a light. To accept his advances could only render her in the end more wretched than before. Her parents, she knew, were still clinging to the idea that all those long years of watchfulness and isolation had at last borne fruit. To them the inevitable disillusion would be a crushing blow. Her mind was quite made up; so long as this prince remained at Akashi she would continue to correspond with him, but further than that she would not go.

His name had been known to her for years past, and she had sometimes wondered whether it would ever fall to her lot to meet, even in the most superficial way, some such magnificent personage as he. Now, astonishing though it seemed, he was actually living a stone’s throw away. She could not be said exactly to have met him, but she constantly caught glimpses of him, heard his inimitable zithern-playing, and knew, one way and another, all that there was to know about his daily comings and goings.