When the time of full mourning was over, Shiônagon, together with the young girl, returned to their house in the capital. There one evening Genji paid them a visit. The house was rather a gloomy one, and was tenanted by fewer inmates than usual.
"How timid the little girl must feel!" thought Genji, as he was shown in. Shiônagon now told him with tearful eyes every circumstance which had taken place since she had seen him. She also said that the girl might be handed over to her father, who told her that she must do so, but his present wife was said to be very austere. The girl is not young enough to be without ideas and wishes of her own, but yet not old enough to form them sensibly; so were she to be taken to her father's house and be placed with several other children, much misery would be the result. Her grandmother suffered much on this account. "Your kindness is great," continued she, "and we ought not, perhaps, to think too anxiously about the future. Still she is young, too young, and we cannot think of it without pity."
"Why do you recur to that so often?" said Genji, "it is her very youthfulness which moves my sympathy. I am anxious to talk to her,
Say, can the wave that rolls to land,
Return to ocean's heaving breast,
Nor greet the weed upon the strand
With one wild kiss, all softly pressed.
How sweet it would be!"
"That is very beautifully put, sir," said Shiônagon, "but,
Half trembling at the coming tide
That rolls about the sea-beat sand,
Say, can the tender weed untried,
Be trusted to its boisterous hand?"
Meanwhile the girl, who was with her companions in her apartment, and who was told that a gentleman in Court dress had arrived, and that perhaps it was the Prince, her father, came running in, saying, "Shiônagon, where is the gentleman in Court dress; has the Prince, my father, arrived?"
"Not the Prince, your father," uttered Genji, "but I am here, and I too am your friend. Come here!"
The girl, glancing with shy timidity at Genji, for whom she already had some liking, and thinking that perhaps there was impropriety in what she had spoken, went over to her nurse, and said, "Oh! I am very sleepy, and wish to lie down!"