difficulty threatened an indefinite delay. The contest was still undecided when night fell.
At last the moment arrived when there was only one more picture to show on each side. Amid intense excitement Princess Akikonomu's side produced the roll containing Genji's sketches at Suma. Tō no Chūjō was aghast. His daughter's side too had reserved for their last stroke one of the most important works at their disposition, but against the prospect of so masterly a hand working at complete leisure and far from the distracting influences which beset an artist in town, Lady Chūjō's supporters at once knew that they could not hope to prevail. An additional advantage was given to Genji's paintings by the pathos of the subject. That during those years of exile he had endured a cheerless and monotonous existence those present could well conjecture. But when they saw, so vividly presented, both the stern manner of his life and in some sort even the feelings which this rustic life had aroused in one used to every luxury and indulgence, they could not but be deeply moved, and there were many (Prince Sochi no Miya among them) who could scarcely refrain from tears. Here were presented in the most vivid manner famous bays and shores of the Suma coast, so renowned in story yet to these city folk so utterly unknown and unimagined. The text was written in cursive Chinese characters, helped out here and there with a little native script, and unlike the business day-to-day journals that men generally keep it was varied by the insertion of an occasional poem or song. The spectators now clamoured only for more specimens of Genji's handiwork, and it would have been impossible at that moment to interest them in anything else. It seemed to them as though all the interest and beauty of the many pictures which they had been examining had in some strange manner accumulated and
