a strange perfume[1] which, though it was familiar to him, he could not then identify. The room seemed full of diverse and exquisite scents that inflamed his imagination, and though he had previously pictured her to himself as handsome, he now (as these perfumes floated round him) thought of her as a hundred times more beautiful than he had ever done before. Her curtains were thick and it was now quite dark. He could not see her and could only guess that she was still near him; but so vividly did she now appear before his mind’s eye that it was as though no barrier were between them, and he began to address her in the most passionate terms. There was now in his style no longer anything of the professional courtier or hardened man-of-the-world. The long outpouring to which Genji, ensconced in his corner of her curtained dais, now listened with considerable emotion, was natural, direct—almost boyish. When it was over, Prince Sochi was rewarded by a note from Saishō, informing him that her mistress had some time ago retired to the inner room![2] ‘This is too bad!’ whispered Genji, creeping to the door of her refuge (he had himself been so intent upon his brother’s eloquence that he had not seen her slip away). ‘You cannot simply disappear while people are talking to you. You are governed by absurd pre-conceived notions, and never stop to consider the merits of the case in question. To treat any visitor, and above all a person of Prince Sochi’s standing, in the manner I have just witnessed would not be tolerated in a child; and in your case, seeing that you are a grown woman not without some experience of Court life, such behaviour is insufferable. Even if you are too shy to converse with him, you might at least sit within reasonable distance….’
