adopted. ‘True,’ thought Tamakatsura, ‘Genji’s attitude towards me is not quite such as I could wish. But I am bound to confess that hitherto he has never tried to go further than I intend he should, and in practical ways no one could possibly be more kind and considerate.’ Thus gratitude was slowly replaced by friendship and even by a certain semblance of intimacy.
Autumn had now come, and with it a bitterly cold wind—the ‘first wind’ whose chill breath ‘only a lover’s cloak can nullify.’ He made great efforts to keep away from the Western Wing, but all to no purpose; and soon, on the pretext of music-lessons or what not, he was spending the greater part of every day at Tamakatsura’s side.
One evening when the moon was some five or six days old he came suddenly to her room. The weather was chilly and overcast, and the wind rustled with a melancholy note through the reeds outside the window. She sat with her head resting against her zithern. To-night too, as on so many previous occasions, he would make his timorous advances, and at the end of it all be just where he started. So Genji grumbled to himself, and continued to behave in a somewhat plaintive and peevish manner during his whole visit. It was however already very late when the fear of giving offence in other quarters drove him from the room. Just as he was leaving he noticed that the flares outside her window were burning very low, and sending for one of his men, he had them kindled anew; but this time at a little distance from the house, under a strangely leaning spindle-tree which spread its branches in the form of a broad canopy, near to the banks of a deep, chilly stream. The thin flares of split pine-wood were placed at wide intervals, casting pale shadows that flickered remotely upon the walls of the unlighted room where she and Genji sat. He caught a glimpse of her hand, showing frail and ghostly
