“Ah! Then if that is so, it will be too late to warn the young Prince Mori,” she cried.
“But do not think of this prince, my lady. Be happy that your august lover is safe.”
“Oh,” she cried, despairingly, “but I cannot have the death of this innocent prince upon my hands. I should die if anything happened to him.”
“Well, do take some comfort, my lady. You say your lover departed last night. Very good. The samurai Shimadzu left yesterday at noon. Yet the young man, I am ready to swear by my sword, will be the first to reach Choshui.”
“Oh, but vengeance and hatred will lend wings to my parent’s feet.”
“And the wings of vengeance and hatred, my lady, are not so fleet as those of the wings of love. Be assured.”
“Sir Gen, you do not know, you would not believe all I have suffered.”
Sir Genji’s brows contracted. Ever since he had followed her to the old Catzu palace, when she was a tiny, bewitching little creature of five, with laughing lips and shining eyes, a flower ornament tumbling down the side of her hair and a miniature kimono tied about with a purple obi, she had been his favorite. He could scarcely believe it possible that any one could be cruel to this beautiful young girl. His looks just then bode ill for any one who should cause her pain. Nevertheless, for many days now the young girl’s chamber had been not unlike that of an inquisitorial prison. It was true there were no thumb-screws or neck-halters or burning-irons within, but there were instruments of torture more refined and excruciating in their torture, because they pierced the mind rather than the body.
If the girl awoke screaming in the night, one could be sure that some creeping, spying presence had entered her chamber and had grown upon the consciousness of her dreams, rudely awakening her to the fearful nightmare of an unseen presence. In the early morning she was awakened from her sleep and forced to carry on those nerve-shocking, heart-breaking interviews with her lover. She fell asleep at night with the intuitive knowledge that one watched unceasingly in her chamber. She might make no stir or movement unobserved.
This Sir Genji heard for the first time.