Page:The Tale of Genji.pdf/75

Rh one day to send him to Court, but I fear that his lack of influence…

‘Poor child!’ said Genji. ‘His sister, then, is your step-mother, is that not so? How strange that you should stand in this relationship with so young a girl! And now I come to think of it there was some talk once of her being presented at Court, and I once heard the Emperor asking what had become of her. How changeable are the fortunes of the world.’ He was trying to talk in a very grown-up way.

‘Indeed, Sir’ answered Ki no Kami, ‘her subsequent state was humbler than she had reason to expect. But such is our mortal life. Yes, yes, and such has it always been. We have our ups and downs—and the women even more than the men.’

Genji: ‘But your father no doubt makes much of her?’

Kino Kami: ‘Makes much of her indeed! You may well say so. She rules his house, and he dotes on her in so wholesale and extravagant a fashion that all of us (and I among the foremost) have had occasion before now to call him to order, but he does not listen.’

Genji: ‘How comes it then that he has left her behind in the house of a fashionable young Courtier? For he looks like a man of prudence and good sense. But pray, where is she now?’

Ki no Kami: ‘The ladies have been ordered to retire to the common room, but they have not yet finished all their preparations.’

Genji’s followers, who had drunk heavily, were now all lying fast asleep on the verandah. He was alone in his room, but could not get to sleep. Having at last dozed for a moment, he woke suddenly and noticed that someone was moving behind the paper-window of the back wall. This, he thought, must be where she is hiding, and faintly