tending and caressing her little girl. One morning when the fast-falling snow was piling up high on every side she sat with the child in her arms, again and again going back in her mind over all the miseries of the past, and picturing to herself the yet more desolate days that were to come. It was long since she had gone into the front of the house. But this morning there was ice on the moat, and she went to the window to look. She was clad in many wraps of some soft, white, fluttering stuff, and as she stood gazing before her with hands clasped behind her head, those within the room thought that, prince’s daughter though her rival was, she could scarce be more lovely in poise and gesture than their lady in her snowy dress. Raising her sleeve to catch the tears that had now begun to fall the Lady of Akashi turned to the nurse and said: ‘If it were upon a day such as this,[1] I do not think that I could bear it….’ And she recited the poem: ‘If country roads be deep in snow, and clouds return, tread thou the written path, and though thyself thou comest not, vouchsafe a sign.’[2] To comfort her the nurse answered through her tears: ‘Though the snow-drifts of Yoshino were heaped across his path, doubt not that whither his heart is set, his footsteps shall tread out their way.’ The snow was now falling a little less fast. Suddenly Genji appeared at the door. The moments during which she waited to receive him put her always into a state of painful agitation. To-day guessing as she did the purpose of his visit, his arrival threw her immediately into an agonizing conflict. Why had she consented? There was still time. If she refused to part with the child, would he snatch it from her? No, indeed; that was unthinkable. But stay! She had consented;
