Read it through once

Among other old ballads Genji now sang ‘Not softlier pillowed is my head,’ and when he came to the line ‘O lady parted from thy kin’ he could not help catching her eye and smiling. Not only did she find his voice very agreeable, but his improvisations between verse and verse delighted her beyond measure. Suddenly he broke off, saying: ‘Now it is your turn. Do not tell me you are shy; for I am certain that you have talent, and if that is so you will forget that there is any one here, once you have become interested in what you are playing. The lady[178] who was “too shy to do anything but go over the tune in her head” wanted all the time to sing the _Sōfuren_,[179] and that is a very different matter. You must get into the habit of playing with any one who comes along, without minding what he thinks of you....’ But try as he might, he could not persuade her to begin. She was certain that her teacher on the island, an old lady of whom it was reported that she had once been in some vague way connected with the Capital and even that she was distantly related to the Imperial Family, had got everything wrong from beginning to end. If only she could persuade Genji to go on playing a little while longer, she felt sure she could pick up enough of the right method to prevent a complete catastrophe, and she sat as near as possible to the zithern, watching his fingers and listening intently. ‘Why does it not always produce such lovely sounds as that?’ she said laughing. ‘Perhaps it depends which way the wind is blowing....’ She looked very lovely as she sat leaning towards him, with the lamplight full upon her face. ‘I have sometimes known you by no means so ready to listen,’ he said, and to her disappointment pushed the zithern from him. But her gentlewomen were passing in and out of the room. Whether for this or other reasons his behaviour to-night continued to be very serious and correct. ‘I see no sign of those young men I brought with me,’ he said at last, ‘I am afraid they grew tired of gazing at every flower save the one they came to see, and went away in disgust. But it is their father’s visit to this flower-garden that I ought all the while to be arranging. I must not be dilatory, for life is full of uncertainties.... How well I remember the conversation in the course of which your father first told me how your mother had carried you away, and of his long search for you both. It does not seem long ago....’ And he told her more than he had ever done before about the rainy night’s conversation and his own first meeting with Yūgao.