Read it through once

The Summer Quarters[122] were not looking their best; indeed at this time of year they could hardly be expected not to wear a somewhat uninteresting air. As he looked about him he could see no object that was evidence of any very pronounced taste or proclivity; the arrangements betokened, rather, a general discrimination and good-breeding. For many years past his affection for her had remained at exactly the same pitch, never flagging in the slightest degree, and at the same time never tempting him to the extremer forms of intimacy. In this way there had long ago grown up between them a relationship far more steady and harmonious than can ever exist between those who are lovers in the stricter sense of the term. This morning he spoke to her for a while from behind her curtains-of-state. But presently he cautiously raised a corner of one curtain, and he looked in. How little she had changed! But he was sorry to see that the New Year’s dress he had given her was not a great success. Her hair had of late years grown much less abundant, and in order to maintain the same style of coiffure, she had been obliged to supplement it by false locks. To these Genji had long ago grown accustomed. But he now began trying to imagine how she appeared to other people, and saw at once that to them she must seem a very homely, middle-aged person indeed. So much the better, then, that he who loved her had this strange power of seeing her as she used to be, rather than as she was now. And she on her side—what if she should one day grow weary of him, as women often did of those who gave them so little as he had done!