Page:The Tale of Genji.pdf/210

204 things have to do with birth or station. For in idle moments he still regretted the loss of Utsusemi and it rankled in him yet that he had in the end allowed her unyielding persistency to win the day.

And so the year drew to its close. One day when he was at his apartments in the Emperor’s Palace, Myōbu came to see him. He liked to have her to do his hair and do small commissions for him. He was not in the least in love with her; but they got on very well together and he found her conversation so amusing that even when she had no duty to perform at the Palace he encouraged her to come and see him whenever she had any news. ‘Something so absurd has happened’ she said, ‘that I can hardly bring myself to tell you about it…,’ and she paused smiling. ‘I can hardly think,’ answered Genji, ‘that there can be anything which you are frightened of telling to me.’ ‘If it were connected with my own affairs,’ she said, ‘you know quite well that I should tell you at once. But this is something quite different. I really find it very hard to talk about.’ For a long while he could get nothing out of her, and only after he had scolded her for making so unnecessary a fuss she at last handed him a letter. It was from the princess. ‘But this,’ said Genji taking it, ‘is the last thing in the world that you could have any reason to hide from me.’ She watched with interest while he read it. It was written on thick paper drenched with a strong perfume; the characters were bold and firm. With it was a poem: ‘Because of your hard heart, your hard heart only, the sleeves of this my Chinese dress are drenched with tears.’ The poem must, he thought, refer to something not contained in the letter.

He was considering what this could be, when his eye fell on a clumsy, old-fashioned clothes-box wrapped in a painted canvas cover. ‘Now’ said Myōbu, ‘perhaps you