Read it through once

‘About women of the common sort I know nothing; but among our own people it has always seemed to me that few indeed were in any way remarkable or interesting. An exception however is our guest in the new wing[52]; she remains charming as ever. But though such beauty and intelligence are very rare, she has never cared to parade them; and since the time when I first realized her gifts and hastened to make her acquaintance, she has always continued to show the same indifference to the worldly conquests which she might so easily have secured. We have now been friends for so long that I do not think we are ever likely to part; I at any rate should be very sorry if she were to leave my house.’ While he thus talked of one thing and another, it grew very late. The moon shone brighter and brighter, and a stillness now reigned that, after the recent wintry storms, was very agreeable. Murasaki recited the verse: ‘The frozen waters are at rest; but now with waves of light the moon-beam ebbs and flows.’ She was looking out at the window, her head a little to one side, and both the expression of her face and the way her hair fell reminded him, as so often before, of her whom he had lost. Suddenly his affections, which for many weeks past had to some small extent been divided, were once more hers, and hers alone.