In Akikonomu’s autumn garden the plantings were more beautiful by the day. All of the autumn colors were gathered together, and emphasized by low fences of black wood and red. Though the flowers were familiar, they somehow seemed different here. The morning and evening dews were like gem-studded carpets. So wide that it seemed to merge with the autumn fields, this autumn garden made the women forget Murasaki’s spring garden, which had so pleased them a few months before. They quite lost themselves in its cool beauties. The autumn side has always had the larger number of adherents in the ancient debate over the relative merits of spring and autumn. Women who had been seduced by the spring garden (so it is in this world) were now seduced by the autumn.

Akikonomu was in residence. Music seemed called for, but the anniversary of her father’s death came this Eighth Month. Though she was fearful for the well-being of her flowers as autumn deepened, they seemed only to be brighter and fresher. But then came a typhoon, more savage than in most years. Falling flowers are always sad, but to see the dews scatter like jewels from a broken strand was for her almost torment. The great sleeve which the poet had wanted as a defense against the spring winds she wanted against those of the autumn. The storm raged into the night, dark and terrible. Behind lowered shutters Akikonomu worried about her autumn flowers.

Murasaki’s southeast garden had been pruned and otherwise readied for winter, but the wind was more than “the little hagi” had been waiting for. Its branches turned and twisted and offered no place for the raindrops. Murasaki came out to the veranda. Genji was with his daughter. Approaching along the east gallery, Yūgiri saw over a low screen that a door was open at a corner of the main hall. He stopped to look at the women inside. The screens having been folded and put away, the view was unobstructed. The lady at the veranda — it would be Murasaki. Her noble beauty made him think of a fine birch cherry blooming through the hazes of spring. It was a gentle flow which seemed to come to him and sweep over him. She laughed as her women fought with the unruly blinds, though he was too far away to make out what she said to them, and the bloom was more radiant. She stood surveying the scene, seeing what the winds had done to each of the flowers. Her women were all very pretty too, but he did not really look at them. It almost frightened him to think why Genji had so kept him at a distance. Such beauty was irresistible, and just such inadvertencies as this were to be avoided at all costs.

As he started to leave, Genji came through one of the doors to the west, separating Murasaki’s rooms from his daughter’s.

“An irritable, impatient sort of wind,” he said. “You must close your shutters. There are men about and you are very visible.”

Yūgiri looked back. Smiling at Murasaki, Genji was so young and handsome that Yūgiri found it hard to believe he was looking at his own father. Murasaki too was at her best. Nowhere could there be a nearer approach to perfection than the two of them, thought Yūgiri, with a stabbing thrill of pleasure. The wind had blown open the shutters along the gallery to make him feel rather exposed. He withdrew. Then, going up to the veranda, he coughed as if to announce that he had just arrived.

“See,” said Genji, pointing to the open door. “You have been quite naked.”

Nothing of the sort had been permitted through all the years. Winds can move boulders and they had reduced the careful order to disarray, and so permitted the remarkable pleasure that had just been Yūgiri’s.

Some men had come up to see what repairs were needed. “We are in for a real storm,” they said. “It’s blowing from the northeast and you aren’t getting the worst of it here. The stables and the angling pavilion could blow away any minute.”

“And where are you on your way from?” Genji asked Yūgiri.

“I was at Grandmother’s, but with all the talk of the storm I was worried about you. But they’re worse off at Sanjō than you are here. The roar of the wind had Grandmother trembling like a child. I think perhaps if you don’t mind I’ll go back.”

“Do, please. It doesn’t seem fair that people should be more childish as they get older, but it is what we all have to look forward to.”

He gave his son a message for the old lady: “It is a frightful storm, but I am sure that Yūgiri is taking good care of you.”

Though the winds were fierce all the way to Sanjō, Yūgiri’s sense of duty prevailed. He looked in on his father and his grandmother every day except when the court was in retreat. His route, even when public affairs and festivals were keeping him very busy, was from his own rooms to his father’s and so to Sanjō and the palace. Today he was even more dutiful, hurrying around under black skies as if trying to keep ahead of the wind.

His grandmother was delighted. “In all my long years I don’t think I have ever seen a worse storm.” She was trembling violently.

Great branches were rent from trees with terrifying explosions. Tiles were flying through the air in such numbers that the roofs must at any moment be stripped bare.

“It was very brave of you.”

Yūgiri had been her chief comfort since her husband’s death. Little was left for her of his glory. Though one could not have said that the world had forgotten her, it does change and move on. She felt closer to Yūgiri than to her son, Tō no Chūjō.

Yūgiri was jumpy and fretful as he sat listening to the howl of the wind. That glimpse of Murasaki had driven away the image that was so much with him. He tried to think of other things. This would not do, indeed it was rather terrible. But the same image was back again a moment after he had driven it away. There could have been few examples in the past of such beauty, nor were there likely to be many in the future. He thought of the lady of the orange blossoms. It was sad for her, but comparison was not possible. How admirable it had been of Genji not to discard so ill-favored a lady! Yūgiri was a very staid and sober young man who did not permit himself wanton thoughts, but he went on thinking wistfully of the years it would add to a man’s life to be with such beauty day and night.

The storm quieted toward dawn, though there were still intermittent showers. Reports came that several of the outbuildings at Rokujō had collapsed. Yūgiri was worried about the lady of the orange blossoms. The Rokujō grounds were vast and the buildings grand, and Genji’s southeast quarter would without question have been well guarded. Less well guarded, the lady of the orange blossoms must have had a perilous time in her northeast quarter. He set off for Rokujō before it was yet full daylight. The wind was still strong enough to drive a chilly rain through the carriage openings. Under unsettled skies, he felt very unsettled himself, as if his spirit had flown off with the winds. Another source of disquiet had been added to what had seemed sufficient disquiet already, and it was of a strange and terrible kind, pointing the way to insanity.

He went first to the northeast quarter, where he found the lady of the orange blossoms in a state of terror and exhaustion. He did what he could to soothe her and gave orders for emergency repairs. Then he went to Genji’s southeast quarter. The shutters had not yet been raised Leaning against the balustrade of the veranda, he surveyed the damage. Trees had been uprooted on the hillocks and branches lay strewn over the garden. The flowers were an almost complete loss. The garden was a clutter of shingles and tiles and shutters and fences. The wan morning light was caught by raindrops all across the sad expanse. Black clouds seethed and boiled overhead. He coughed to announce his presence.

“Yūgiri is with us already.” It was Genji’s voice. “And here it is not yet daylight.”

There was a reply which Yūgiri did not catch, and Genji laughed and said: “Not even in our earliest days together did you know the parting at dawn so familiar to other ladies. You may find it painful at first.”

This sort of bedroom talk had a very disturbing effect on a young man. Yūgiri could not hear Murasaki’s answers, but Genji’s jocular manner gave a sense of a union so close and perfect that no wedge could enter.

Genji himself raised the shutters. Yūgiri withdrew a few steps, not wishing to be seen quite so near at hand.

“And how were things with your grandmother? I imagine she was very pleased to see you.”

“She did seem pleased. She weeps much too easily, and I had rather a time of it.”

Genji smiled. “She does not have many years left ahead of her. You must be good to her. She complains about that son of hers. He lacks the finer qualities of sympathy and understanding, she says. He does have a flamboyant strain and a way of brushing things impatiently aside. When it comes to demonstrating filial piety he puts on almost too good a show, and one senses a certain carelessness in the small things that really matter. But I do not wish to speak ill of him. He is a man of superior intelligence and insight, and more talented than this inferior age of ours deserves. He can be a bother at times, but there are not many men with so few faults. But what a storm. I wonder if Her Majesty’s men took proper care of her.”

He sent Yūgiri with a message. “How did the screaming winds treat you? I had an attack of chills just as they were their lunatic worst, and so the hours went by and I was not very attentive. You must forgive me.”

Yūgiri was very handsome in the early-morning light as he made his way along a gallery and through a door to Akikonomu’s southwest quarter. He could see from the south veranda of the east wing that two shutters and several blinds had been raised at the main hall. Women were visible in the dim light beyond. Two or three had come forward and were leaning against the balustrades. Who might they be? Though in casual dress, they managed to look very elegant in multicolored robes that blended pleasantly in the twilight. Akikonomu had sent some little girls to lay out insect cages in the damp garden. They had on robes of lavender and pink and various deeper shades of purple, and yellow-green jackets lined with green, all appropriately autumnal hues. Disappearing and reappearing among the mists, they made a charming picture. Four and five of them with cages of several colors were walking among the wasted flowers, picking a wild carnation here and another flower there for their royal lady. The wind seemed to bring a scent from even the scentless asters, most delightfully, as if Akikonomu’s own sleeves had brushed them. Thinking it improper to advance further without announcing himself, Yūgiri quietly made his presence known and stepped forward. The women withdrew inside, though with no suggestion of surprise or confusion. Still a child when Akikonomu had gone to court, he had had the privilege of her inner chambers. Even now her women did not treat him as an outsider. Having delivered Genji’s message, he paused to talk of more personal matters with such old friends as Saishō and Naishi. For all the informality, Akikonomu maintained proud and strict discipline, the palpable presence of which made him think of the ladies who so occupied and disturbed his thoughts.

The shutters had meanwhile been raised in Murasaki’s quarter. She was looking out over her flowers, the cause of such regre............