Page:The Tale of Genji.pdf/215

Rh begun’ and smiling encouragingly at her he left the house, she following him with her eyes from the couch on which she lay. Her face as usual was half covered by her arm; but the unfortunate flower still bloomed conspicuously. ‘Poor thing, she really is very ugly,’ thought Genji in despair.

When he returned to the Nijō-in he found Murasaki waiting for him. She was growing up as handsome a girl as one could wish, and promised well for the future. She was wearing a plain close-fitting dress of cherry colour; above all, the unstudied grace and ease of her movements charmed and delighted him as he watched her come to meet him. In accordance with the wishes of her old-fashioned grandmother her teeth were not blackened, but her eyebrows were delicately touched with stain. ‘Why, when I might be playing with a beautiful child, do I spend my time with an ugly woman?’ Genji kept on asking himself in bewilderment while they sat together playing with her dolls. Next she began to draw pictures and colour them. After she had painted all sorts of queer and amusing things, ‘Now I am going to do a picture for you,’ said Genji and drawing a lady with very long hair he put a dab of red on her nose. Even in a picture, he thought pausing to look at the effect, it gave one a most uncomfortable feeling. He went and looked at himself in the mirror and as though dissatisfied with his own fresh complexion he suddenly put on his own nose a dab of red such as he had given to the lady in the picture. He looked at himself in the mirror. His handsome face had in an instant become ridiculous and repulsive. At first the child laughed. ‘Should you go on liking me if I were always as ugly as this?’ he asked. Suddenly she began to be afraid that the paint would not come off. ‘Oh why did you do it?’ she cried. ‘How horrible!’ He pretended to rub it without effect. ‘No,’ he said ruefully, ‘it will not come off. What a sad end to our game! I