at hand. For years she had been so terrified lest her secret should become known that she had treated Genji with exaggerated indifference, convinced that if by any sign or look she betrayed her partiality for him their attachment would at once become common knowledge at Court. She called to mind countless occasions when, longing for his sympathy and love, she had turned coldly away. The result of all her precautions did indeed seem to be that, in a world where everything that anyone knows sooner or later gets repeated, this particular secret had, so far as she could judge by the demeanour of those with whom she came in contact, remained absolutely undivulged. But the effort had cost her very dear, and she now remembered with pity and remorse the harshness which this successful policy had involved. Her answer to the letter which he sent from Suma was long and tender; she sought indeed to explain and expiate her seeming heartlessness in former days.
An answer also came from Oborozuki: ‘Not even to fishers that on the shore of Suma their faggots burn must we reveal the smouldering ashes of our love.’ ‘More I have no heart to write,’ she added in the margin of this poem, which was on a tiny strip of paper discreetly hidden between the pages of a note from Lady Chūnagon. In her own letter this lady gave a most melancholy account of her mistress’s condition. All these tales of woe made the arrival of Genji’s return post-bag a somewhat depressing event.
Murasaki’s letter was full of the tenderest allusions and messages. With it was the poem: ‘Look at the sleeves of the fisherfolk who trail salt-water tubs along the shore: you will not find them wetter than mine were on the night you put out to sea.’ The clothes and other odds and ends which she sent him were all of the most delicate make and colour. She had evidently taken immense trouble, and he
