Read it through once

The evening was now drawing in, and as the sky was very much overcast the room was almost dark. Beyond her curtains Tamakatsura could just discern the motionless form of her suitor, gracefully outlined against the gloom, while from her side a stirring of the evening air would occasionally carry towards him a fragrance enhanced by a strange perfume[158] which, though it was familiar to him, he could not then identify. The room seemed full of diverse and exquisite scents that inflamed his imagination, and though he had previously pictured her to himself as handsome, he now (as these perfumes floated round him) thought of her as a hundred times more beautiful than he had ever done before. Her curtains were thick and it was now quite dark. He could not see her and could only guess that she was still near him; but so vividly did she now appear before his mind’s eye that it was as though no barrier were between them, and he began to address her in the most passionate terms. There was now in his style no longer anything of the professional courtier or hardened man-of-the-world. The long outpouring to which Genji, ensconced in his corner of her curtained daïs, now listened with considerable emotion, was natural, direct—almost boyish. When it was over, Prince Sochi was rewarded by a note from Saishō, informing him that her mistress had some time ago retired to the inner room![159] ‘This is too bad!’ whispered Genji, creeping to the door of her refuge (he had himself been so intent upon his brother’s eloquence that he had not seen her slip away). ‘You cannot simply disappear while people are talking to you. You are governed by absurd pre-conceived notions, and never stop to consider the merits of the case in question. To treat any visitor, and above all a person of Prince Sochi’s standing, in the manner I have just witnessed would not be tolerated in a child; and in your case, seeing that you are a grown woman not without some experience of Court life, such behaviour is insufferable. Even if you are too shy to converse with him, you might at least sit within reasonable distance....’ Genji had never yet pursued her into the inner room; but she had no doubt that on the present occasion, in his eagerness to reform her manners, he would have no scruple in doing so; and reluctantly she left her place of retreat and once more seated herself near the edge of her curtained daïs. Sochi now attempted to begin a more general conversation, but no topic seemed to arouse her interest. Suddenly her attention was distracted by a light which had begun to glimmer quite close to where she sat. It seemed to move when Genji moved. She now saw him go to her curtains-of-state and, at a certain point, hook back the inner curtain, leaving only a single thickness of light transparent stuff. Here he suspended something bright, that looked like a paper candle.... What was he doing? She was dumbfounded.