Page:The Sacred Tree (Waley 1926).pdf/210

204 She had been sitting at the lattice and, in her shyness, did not rise when she saw him. They continued to converse thus, he in the porch and she at her window, but there was in her manner no hint of unfriendliness or reprobation. What a relief to encounter at last a disposition so grateful and unexacting! Some water-fowl were clamouring quite close to the house. She recited the verse: ‘Dare I admit you to a house so desolate that even the shy water-birds regard it as their home?’ Her voice died away to a whisper as she reached the last words in a way which he found strangely alluring. What a lot of nice people there seemed to be in the world, thought Genji. And the odd part of it was that it was just this very fact which made life so difficult and fatiguing. He answered with the verse: ‘If the cry of the water-fowl brings you always so promptly to your door, some visitor there must be whom it is your pleasure to admit.’ This was of course mere word-play. He did not for a moment suppose that any such agreeable adventures ever fell to her lot; nor indeed that she would welcome them. For though she had had to wait years for this visit, he felt confident that her fidelity had never once wavered. She reminded him of his poem: ‘Gaze not into the sky…’ and of all that had befallen at that farewell scene on the eve of his departure for Suma. ‘It seems strange,’ she said at last, ‘that I of all people should so much have minded your being away, considering how seldom I see you when you are here!’ But even this was said with perfect gentleness and good humour. His reply to this charge was, you may be sure, both prompt and conciliatory, and it was not long before he had managed, by kindness of one sort or another, to make her, for the moment at any rate, as happy as it is possible for any woman to be.

He often thought during these days of Lady Gosechi,