breaking when, unsolaced, he set out for home. But as she watched him go his beauty suddenly made havoc of all her resolutions and again she felt that it was madness to leave him. Yet what had she to stay for? Aoi was with child and this could only be a sign that he had made his peace with her. Henceforward he could lead a life of irreproachable rectitude and if once in a way he came to make his excuse as he had come to-day, what purpose would that serve, save to keep ever fresh the torment of her desires? Thus when his letter came next day it found her more distraught than before: ‘The sick woman who for a few days past had shown some improvement is again suffering acutely and it is at present impossible for me to leave her.’ Certain that this was a mere excuse she sent in reply the poem ‘The fault is mine and the regret, if careless as the peasant girl who stoops too low amid the sprouting rice I soiled my sleeve in love’s dark road.’ At the end of her letter she reminded him of the old song: ‘Now bitterly do I repent that ever I brought my pitcher to the mountain well where waters were but deep enough to soil my sleeve.’ He looked at the delicate handwriting. Who was there, even among women of her high lineage and breeding, that could rival the ineffable grace and elegance with which this small note was penned? That one whose mind and person alike so strongly attracted him must now by his own act be lost to him forever, was a bitter thought. Though it was almost dark, he sat down and wrote to her: ‘Do not say that the waters have but wetted your sleeve. For the shallowness is in your comparison only; not in my affections!’ And to this he added the poem: ‘’Tis you, you only who have loitered among the shallow pools: while I till all my limbs were drenched have battled through the thickets of love’s dark track.’ And he ended with the words: ‘Had but a ray of comfort lighted the troubles of this house, I should myself have been the bearer of this note.’
Meanwhile Aoi’s possession had returned in full force; she was in a state of pitiable torment. It reached Lady Rokujō’s ears that the illness had been attributed by some to the operation of her ‘living spirit.’ Others,