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away when I knew that you were honouring my mother’s house. . . .’ ‘If any one has been endangering our good relations, it is I,’ answered Genji. ‘Did you but know it, I stand in need of all the charity and forbearance that you can muster.’^[1]

Tō no Chūjō was puzzled by this; but he naturally assumed that it referred to the trouble concerning Kumoi and Yūgiri, and certain that something very disagreeable was coming, he waited for Genji to continue. ‘In old days it was very seldom that we differed about any matter of importance, whether it concerned our own lives or the affairs of the country, and for this reason I felt perfectly confident in handing over to you the direction of the Government. It seemed as little likely that our views would clash as that a bird’s two wings should start flying in different directions. If lately I may seem to you sometimes to have acted in a way at variance with this old concord, you cannot claim that it has been in matters of any wide or general importance. But that is not enough; as I grow older I feel all the more anxious that not even these small domestic difficulties should continue to mar our friendship or in any way alter it from what it was in earlier days. You seemed to avoid me; but I knew from experience that the duties I myself had thrust upon you leave little time for friendship, and had I been merely an acquaintance I should not have been surprised at your becoming somewhat difficult of access. But despite all that had arisen between us our relationship was merely of a somewhat different kind. . . .’

Tō no Chūjō had not the least idea what all this was going to lead up to. ‘Certainly we were very intimate at one time,’ he answered. ‘It is possible that I presumed too much upon our friendship—ignored too completely the