Page:The Sacred Tree (Waley 1926).pdf/236

230 found, amid a tangled mass of wreckage, a drawing-room perfectly appointed in every detail, each ornament, each screen and article of furniture still standing exactly where the late prince had left it. True, there was no longer anyone to dust this last-surviving room, and it needed dusting badly. Never mind, it was a real room; not just a living-place, but a noble apartment with everything in it handsome and dignified just as it ought to be. And here, year in and year out, her whole life was spent.

Solitary people with a great deal of time on their hands seem usually to turn to old ballads and romances for amusement and distraction, but for such employments the princess showed little inclination. Even in the lives of those who have no particular interest in poetry there are usually periods of inactivity during which they take to exchanging verses with some sympathetic correspondent—verses which, if they are young, generally contain affecting references to various kinds of plant and tree. But the princess’s father had imbued her with the belief that all outward display of emotion is undignified and ill-bred; she felt that what he would really have liked best would have been for her to communicate with no one at all, and she had long given up writing even to the few relations with whom she might have been expected occasionally to correspond.

At rare intervals she would open an old-fashioned chest and fiddle for a while with a number of ancient picture-scrolls, illustrations of such stories as The Chinese Prefect, The Mistress of Hakoya, Princess Kaguya and the like.