Here in preparation for the coming festival all the young princes were gathered together, and during the days which followed everyone was busy practising the songs or dances which had been assigned to him. Never had the Great Hall resounded with such a continual flow of music. The recorder and the big flute were all the while in full blast; and even the big drum was rolled out on to the verandah, the younger princes amusing themselves by experimenting upon it. Genji was so busy that he had barely time to pay an occasional surreptitious visit even to his dearest friends, and the autumn passed without his returning to the Hitachi Palace. The princess could not make it out.
Just at the time when the music-practices were at their height Myōbu came to see him. Her account of the princess’s condition was very distressing. ‘It is sad to witness day by day as I do how the poor lady suffers from your unkind treatment,’ she said and almost wept as she told him about it. He was doubly embarrassed. What must Myōbu be thinking of him since she found out that he had so recklessly falsified all the assurances of good behaviour that she had made on his account? And then the princess herself.... He could imagine what a pathetic figure she must be, dumbly buried in her own despondent thoughts and questionings. ‘Please make it clear to her’ he said, ‘that I have been extremely busy; that is really the sole reason that I have not visited her.’ But he added with a sigh ‘I hope soon to have a chance of teaching her not to be quite so stiff and shy.’ He smiled as he said it, and because he was so young and charming Myōbu somehow felt that despite her indignation she must smile too. At his age it was inevitable that he should cause a certain amount of suffering. Suddenly it seemed to her perfectly right that he should do as he felt inclined without thinking much about the consequences. When the busy festival time was over he did indeed pay several visits to the Hitachi Palace, but then followed his adoption of little Murasaki whose ways so entranced him that he became very irregular even in his visits to the Sixth Ward;85 still less had he any inclination, though he felt as sorry for the princess as ever, to visit that