Page:The Tale of Genji.pdf/117

Rh looked out into the distance: dense woods fast turning to jungle. And nearer the house not a flower or bush, but only unkempt, autumn grasslands, and a pond choked with weeds. It was a wild and desolate place. It seemed that the steward and his men must live in some outbuilding or lodge at a distance from the house; for here there was no sign or sound of life. ‘It is, I must own, a strange and forsaken place to which we have come. But no ghost or evil fairy will dare molest you while I am here.’

It pained her very much that he still was masked; and indeed such a precaution was quite out of keeping with the stage at which they had now arrived. So at last, reciting a poem in which he reminded her that all their love down to this moment when ‘the flower opened its petals to the evening dew’ had come from a chance vision seen casually from the street, half-turning his face away, for a moment he let her see him unmasked. ‘What of the “shining dew” ’ he asked using the words that she had written on the fan. ‘How little knew I of its beauty who had but in the twilight doubted and guessed …!’; so she answered his poem in a low and halting voice. She need not have feared, for to him, poor as the verses were, they seemed delightful. And indeed the beauty of his uncovered face, suddenly revealed to her in this black wilderness of dereliction and decay, surpassed all loveliness that she had ever dreamed of or imagined. ‘I cannot wonder that while I still set this barrier between us, you did not choose to tell me all that I longed to know. But now it would be very unkind of you not to tell me your name.’ ‘I am like the fisherman’s daughter in the song’ she said, ‘ “I have no name or home.” ’ But for all that she would not tell him who she was, she seemed much comforted that he had