[I would] solace [you] with consoling words
If spoken in vain
No longer could be exchanged.
To talk with you about the departed one; how would it be [for you] to come in the evening unobtrusively?
Her answer:
As I hear of comfort I wish to talk with you, but being an uprooted person there is no hope of my standing upright. I am footless [meaning, I cannot go to you].
Thus she wrote, and His Highness decided to come as a private person.
It was still daylight, and he secretly called his servant Ukon-no-zo, who had usually been the medium by which the letters had reached the Prince, and said,
"I am going somewhere," The man understood and made preparations.
His Highness came in an humble palanquin and made his page announce him. It was embarrassing. She did not know what to do; she could not pretend to be absent after having written him an answer that very day. It seemed too heartless to make him go back at once without entering. Thinking, "I will only talk to him," she placed a cushion by the west door on the veranda, and invited the Prince there. Was it because he was so much admired by the world that he seemed to her unusually fascinating? But this only increased her caution. While they were talking the moon shone out and it became uncomfortably bright.
He: "As I have been out of society and living in the shade, I am not used to such a bright place as this "—It was too embarrassing!—"Let me come in where you are sitting; I will not be rude as others are. You are not one to receive me often, are you?" "No indeed! What a strange idea! Only to-night we shall talk together I think; never again!" Thus lightly talking, the night advanced—"Shall we spend the night in this way?" he asked:
The night passes,
We dream no faintest dream—
What shall remain to me of this summer night?