feeling rather overpowered by all the noise and bustle of the flower-party’ Genji explained. ‘I am very sorry to disturb my sisters, but I can think of nowhere else to seek refuge ...’ and advancing towards the main door of the women’s apartments he pushed back the curtain with his shoulder. ‘Refuge indeed!’ cried one of the ladies laughing at him. ‘You ought to know by now that it is only poor relations who come to seek refuge with the more successful members of their family. What pray have you come to bother us for?’ ‘Impertinent creatures!’ he thought but nevertheless there was something in their manner which convinced him they were persons of some consequence in the house and not, as he at first supposed, mere waiting-women. A scent of costly perfumes pervaded the room; silken skirts rustled in the darkness. There could be little doubt that these were Kōkiden’s sisters and their friends. Deeply absorbed, as indeed was the whole of this family, in the fashionable gaieties of the moment, they had flouted decorum and posted themselves at the window that they might see what little they could of the banquet which was proceeding outside. Little thinking that his plan could succeed, yet led on by delightful recollections of his previous encounter he advanced towards them chanting in a careless undertone the song:
But for ‘belt’ he substituted ‘fan’ and by this means he sought to discover which of the ladies was his friend. ‘Why, you have got it wrong! I never heard of that Korean’ one of them cried. Certainly it was not she. But there was another who though she remained silent seemed to him to be sighing softly to herself. He stole towards the curtain-of-state behind which she was sitting and taking her hand in his at a venture he whispered the poem: ‘If on this day of shooting my arrow went astray, ’twas that in dim morning twilight only the mark had glimmered in my view.’ And she, unable any longer to hide that she knew him, answered with the verse: ‘Had it been with the arrows of the heart that you had shot, though from the moon’s slim bow no brightness came would you have missed your mark?’ Yes, it was her voice. He was delighted, and yet....