and bade him deliver it secretly; but was afterwards very uneasy at the thought that it might go astray. ‘If it falls into Shōshō’s hands’ he thought ‘he will at once guess that it was I who was before him.’ But after all Shōshō would probably not take that so very hard, Genji had vanity enough to think.
The boy delivered the message when Shōshō was at a safe distance. She could not help feeling a little hurt; but it was something that he had remembered her at all, and justifying it to herself with the excuse that she had had no time to do anything better, she sent the boy straight back with the verse: ‘The faint wind of your favour, that but for a moment blew, with grief has part befrosted the small sedge of the eaves.’ It was very ill-written, with all sorts of ornamental but misleading strokes and flourishes; indeed with a complete lack of style. However, it served to remind him of the face he had first seen that evening by the lamplight. As for the other who on that occasion had sat so stiffly facing her, what determination there had been in her face, what a steady resolution to give no quarter!
The affair with the lady of the sedge was so unintentional and so insignificant that though he regarded it as rather frivolous and indiscreet, he saw no great harm in it. But if he did not take himself in hand before it was too late he would soon again be involved in some entanglement which might finally ruin his reputation.
On the forty-ninth day after Yūgao’s death a service in her memory was by his orders secretly held in the Hokedō on Mount Hiyei. The ritual performed was of the most elaborate kind, everything that was required being supplied from the Prince’s own store; and even the decoration of the service books and images was carried out with the utmost attention. Koremitsu’s brother, a man of great piety,
