Two or three days passed without a word from him. Her heart was in his promise which gave her hope, but she could not sleep for anxiety. While lying awake in bed, she heard a knocking at the gate. It was just dawn. "What can it be?" she wondered, and sent a servant to inquire. It was the Prince's letter. It was an unusual hour for it and she wondered sorrowfully whether the Prince had been conscious of her emotion. She opened her shutter and read this letter in the moonlight:
Do you see that the little night opens[18]
And on the ridge of the mountain, serenely bright,
Shines the moon of a night of Autumn?
The bridge across the garden pond was clearly seen in the moonlight. The door was shut, and she thought of the messenger outside the gate and hastened her answer:.
The night opens and I cannot sleep,
Yet I am dreaming dreams,
And, loving them, the moon I do not see.
The Prince thought the answer not invented, and that it would be amusing to have her near him, to respond to his every fancy. After two days he came quietly in a palanquin for women. It was the first time she had shown herself to him in full[19] daylight, but it would be unfriendly to creep away and hide, so she went to welcome him, creeping a little nearer to the entrance. He excused himself for the absence of those days and said: "Make up your mind quickly as to the thing I spoke of the other day. I am always uneasy in these wanderings, yet more uneasy when I cannot see you. O troublesome are the ways of this absurd world!"
She replied: "I wish to yield to your mind, whatever it may be, yet my thoughts are troubled when I anticipate my fate and see myself neglected by you afterwards."
He said: "Try it, I can come very seldom." And he went away. On the hedge there was a beautiful mayumi[20] and the Prince, leaning against the balustrade:
Our words are like these leaves,
Ever coloured deeper and deeper—
And she took it up [completing the 31-syllable poem he had begun]:
Although it is only the pearl dew that deepens them.