CHAPTER IV YŪGAO

As they left the house he looked at the fan upon which the white flowers had been laid. He now saw that there was writing on it, a poem carelessly but elegantly scribbled: ‘The flower that puzzled you was but the Yūgao, strange beyond knowing in its dress of shining dew.’ It was written with a deliberate negligence which seemed to aim at concealing the writer’s status and identity. But for all that the hand showed a breeding and distinction which agreeably surprised him. ‘Who lives in the house on the left?’ he asked. Koremitsu, who did not at all want to act as a go-between, replied that he had only been at his mother’s for five or six days and had been so much occupied by her illness that he had not asked any questions about the neighbours. ‘I want to know for a quite harmless reason’ said Genji. ‘There is something about this fan which raises a rather important point. I positively must settle it. You would oblige me by making enquiries from someone who knows the neighbourhood.’ Koremitsu went at once to the house next door and sent for the steward. ‘This house’ the man said ‘belongs to a certain Titular-Prefect. He is living in the country, but my lady is still here; and as she is young and loves company, her brothers who are in service at the Court often come here to visit her.’ ‘And that is about all one can expect a servant to know’ said Koremitsu when he repeated this information. It occurred at once to Genji that it was one of these Courtiers who had written the poem. Yes, there was certainly a self-confident air in the writing. It was by someone whose rank entitled him to have a good opinion of himself. But he was romantically disposed; it was too painful to dismiss altogether the idea that, after all, the verses might really have been meant for him, and on a folded paper he wrote: ‘Could I but get a closer view, no longer would they puzzle me—the flowers that all too dimly in the gathering dusk I saw.’ This he wrote in a disguised hand and gave to his servant. The man reflected that though the senders of the fan had never seen Genji before, yet so well known were his features, that even the glimpse they had got from the window might easily have revealed to them his identity. He could imagine the excitement with which