For some while everything in the world to which he had now returned seemed strange to him and he indeed scarce knew himself; but by the twentieth day of the ninth month his recovery was complete, nor did the pallor and thinness of his face become him by any means ill.
At times he would stare vacantly before him and burst into loud weeping, and seeing this there were not wanting those who said that he was surely possessed.
Often he would send for Ukon, and once when they had been talking in the still of the evening he said to her ‘There is one thing which still puzzles me. Why would she never tell me who she was? For even if she was indeed, as she once said, “a fisherman’s child,” it was a strange perversity to use such reticence with one who loved her so well.’
‘You ask why she hid her name from you?’ said Ukon. ‘Can you wonder at it? When could she have been expected to tell you her name (not that it would have meant much to you if you had heard it)? For from the beginning you treated her with a strange mistrust, coming with such secrecy and mystery as might well make her doubt whether you were indeed a creature of the waking