mind, bringing with them a new access of longing. The cherry-trees of the Southern Hall must now be in full bloom. He remembered the wonderful Flower Feast of six years ago, saw his father’s face, the elegant figure of the young Crown Prince; and verses from the poems which he had himself made on that occasion floated back into his mind.
All this while Tō no Chūjō had been living at the Great Hall, with very little indeed to amuse him. He had been put down again into the Fourth Rank and was very much discouraged. It was essential to his prospects that he should not come under any further suspicion, but he was an affectionate creature and finding himself longing more and more for Genji’s society, he determined, even at the cost of offending the Government, to set out at once for Suma. The complete unexpectedness of his visit made it all the more cheering and delightful. He was soon admiring Genji’s rustic house, which seemed to him the most extraordinary place to be living in. He thought it more like some legendary hermit’s hut in a Chinese book than a real cottage. Indeed the whole place might have come straight out of a picture, with its hedge of wattled bamboo, the steps of unhewn stone, the stout pine-wood pillars and general air of improvisation. Chūjō was enchanted by the strangeness of it all. Genji was dressed in peasant style with a grey hunting-cloak and outer breeches over a suit of russet-brown. The way in which he played up to this rustic costume struck Chūjō as highly absurd and at the same time delighted him. The furniture was all of the simplest kind and even Genji’s seat was not divided off in any way from the rest of the room. Near it lay boards for the games of go and sugoroku, and chessmen, with other such gear as is met with in country houses. The meals, which were necessarily of a somewhat makeshift character, seemed to Chūjō positively exciting. One day some fisher-
