Page:The Sacred Tree (Waley 1926).pdf/217

Rh After leaving Sumiyoshi he visited several places in the neighbourhood. At Naniwa he too underwent the ceremony of Purification, together with other ceremonies, particularly the Ablution of the Seven Streams. As he passed the estuary of Horiye he murmured ‘Like the Tide-gauge at Naniwa…’, hardly knowing why the lines had come into his head. Koremitsu, who was near his coach, overheard these words, and regarding them as a command to him to produce writing materials (a duty for which he was often in request) he whipped out a short-handled pen from the folds of his dress and as soon as Genji’s coach came to a standstill handed it in to him. Genji was amused by his promptness and on a folded paper wrote the lines: ‘That once again our love to its flood-mark shall rise, what better presage than this chance meeting by the tide-gauge of the shore?’ This he sent across to Naniwa by the hand of an underling who, from conversation with her servants, knew at what address she was to be found. Much as she had suffered at seeing him pass her by, it needed only this trifling message to allay all her agitation. In a flutter of gratitude and pride she indited the answer: ‘How comes it that to the least of those who bide as pilgrims in this town you bear a love that mounts so high upon the flood-gauge of your heart?’ She had that day been bathing in the Holy Waters at the Shrine of Rain-coat Island, and she sent him her poem tied to a prayer-strip which she had brought from the Shrine. When the message reached Genji it was already growing dark; the tide was full, and the cranes along the river-mouth had with one accord set up their strange and moving cry. Touched by