Among the withered undergrowth in the garden Genji found to his delight a few gentians still blossoming and after Chūjō was gone he plucked some and bade the wet-nurse Saisō give them to the child’s grandmother, together with the verse: ‘This gentian flower that lingered amid the withered grasses of the hedge I send you in remembrance of the autumn that is passed.’ ‘To you’ he added ‘it will seem a poor thing in contrast to the flowers that are gone.’ The Princess looked at her grandson’s innocent smiling face and thought that in beauty he was not far behind the child she had lost. Already her tears were pouring faster than a stormy wind shakes down the dry leaves from a tree, and when she read Genji’s message they flowed faster still. This was her answer: ‘New tears, but tears of joy it brings,—this blossom from a meadow that is now laid waste.’
Still in need of some small employment to distract his thoughts, though it was already getting dark he began a letter to Princess Asagao who, he felt sure, must long ago have been told of his bereavement. Although it was a long time since he had heard from her he made no reference to their former friendship; his letter was indeed so formal that he allowed the messenger to read it before he started. It was written on Chinese paper tinted sky-blue. With it was the poem ‘When I look back upon an autumn fraught with diverse sorrows I find no dusk dimmed with such tears as I to-night have shed.’ He took great pains with his handwriting and her ladies thought it a shame that so elegant a note should remain unanswered. In the end she reached the same conclusion. ‘Though my heart goes out towards you in your affliction,’ she answered, ‘I see no cause to abandon my distrust.’ And to this she added the poem ‘Since I heard that the mists of autumn had vanished and left desolate winter in your house, I have thought often of you as I watched the streaming sky.’ This was all, and it was written hastily, but to Genji, who for so long had received no news from her, it gave as much pleasure as the longest and most ingenious epistle.