the provincial treasurer’s, who was to accompany him to his province, and she was therefore pledged to go down to Tsukushi, whether the princess joined the party or not. She was however deeply attached to her mistress and very loath indeed to leave her in her present condition. She therefore discussed the matter with her again, and did everything in her power to persuade the princess to accompany them; only to make the extraordinary discovery that Suyetsumu was still from day to day living in the hope that the visitor from whom she had for all those years had no word would suddenly reappear and put everything to rights again. ‘He was very fond of me,’ she said. ‘It is only because he has been unhappy himself that he has not remembered to write to me. If he had the slightest idea of what is happening to us here, he would come at once….’ So she had been thinking for years, and though the general structure of the house fell every day into a more fantastic state of dilapidation, she still persisted as obstinately as ever in retaining every trifling article of furniture and decoration in exactly the place where it had always been. She spent so much of her time in tears that a certain part of her face had now become as red as the flower which the hillman carries over his ear; so that her appearance, particularly when she showed her face in profile, would have struck a casual visitor as somewhat forbidding. But of this I will say no more; it is perhaps always a mistake to enter into matters of that kind.
As the cold weather came on, existence at the Hitachi Palace rapidly became more and more difficult. The princess sat staring in front of her, plunged in unbroken gloom. Meanwhile Genji celebrated the ritual of the Eight Readings, in memory of his father, the old Emperor. He took great trouble in choosing the priests for this ceremony and succeeded finally in assembling a notable band of dignitaries.
