likely to part; I at any rate should be very sorry if she were to leave my house.’ While he thus talked of one thing and another, it grew very late. The moon shone brighter and brighter, and a stillness now reigned that, after the recent wintry storms, was very agreeable. Murasaki recited the verse: ‘The frozen waters are at rest; but now with waves of light the moon-beam ebbs and flows.’ She was looking out at the window, her head a little to one side, and both the expression of her face and the way her hair fell reminded him, as so often before, of her whom he had lost. Suddenly his affections, which for many weeks past had to some small extent been divided, were once more hers, and hers alone.
Just then a love-bird[1] cried, and he recited the verse: ‘Does it not move you strangely, the love-bird’s cry, to-night when, like the drifting snow, memory piles up on memory?’ Long after he and Murasaki had retired to rest, recollections of Lady Fujitsubo continued to crowd into his mind, and when at last he fell asleep, a vision of her at once appeared to him, saying in tones of deep reproach: ‘It may be that you on earth have kept our secret; but in the land of the dead shame cannot be hid, and I am paying dearly for what you made me do….’ He tried to answer, but fear choked his voice, and Murasaki, hearing him suddenly give a strange muffled cry, said rather peevishly: ‘What are you doing that for? You frightened me!’ The sound of her voice roused him. He woke in a terrible state of grief and agitation, his eyes full of tears which he at once made violent efforts to control. But soon he was weeping bitterly, to the bewilderment of Murasaki, who nevertheless lay all the time stock still at his side. He was now too miserable and distracted to think of sleep, and slipping out of bed presently began writing notes to various temples in the district, directing that certain texts
- ↑ Generally called by the ugly name ‘Mandarin Duck.’
