unaccountable. Thus her days and nights were spent in an agony of indecision and often she repeated to herself the lines ‘My heart like the fishers’ float on Ise shore is danced from wave to wave.’128 She felt herself indeed swirled this way and that by paroxysms that sickened her but were utterly beyond her control.
Genji, though it pained him that she should feel it necessary to go so far away did not attempt to dissuade her from the journey. ‘It is quite natural’ he wrote, ‘that tiresome creature as I am you should want to put me altogether out of your head. I only beg that even though you see no use in it, you will let me see you once more before you go. Were we to meet, you would soon realize that I care for your happiness far more than you suppose.’ But she could not forget how when at the River of cleansing she sought a respite from the torture of her own doubt and indecision, rough waves had dashed her against the rocks,129 and she brooded more and more upon this wrong till there was room for no other thought in all her heart.