Tall, oval-faced, with heavy eyebrows like a youth, the Yumi in the mirror stared back and said:

‘I suppose this is how I’d look if I was a bride. The effect’s rather mannish, isn’t it? I look as though I ought to be holding a halberd or something.’

‘Like Shizuka, the heroine in the Kabuki play,’ said Suga, taking up the joke with unusual alacrity. ‘But hurry up and take it off. If the mistress comes, you’ll be in real trouble.’

‘Don’t worry. The two geishas from Shimbashi have just started dancing the congratulatory dance, so they’ll all be too busy watching. Here Suga – you try it on too. After all, it doesn’t look as if we’ll ever get any other chance to wear wedding clothes.’ As she spoke, she swiftly took off the long-sleeved outer garment and slipped it over Suga’s shoulders. Trembling and fearful though she was, Suga did not remove it immediately but quietly got up and with a glance about her went and stood before the mirror as Yumi had done.

‘It’s so heavy! I don’t have your look of breeding, so it doesn’t suit me so well.’

‘Oh, but it does! You look pretty. It looks much better on you than it did just now on the young mistress.’

‘Really…?’ The tone was doubtful, but Suga did not seem displeased as she adjusted the neck of the garment and stared hard at her own face to which the crimson of the embroidered robe gave an added vividness. In both Suga and Yumi – the girl who had been bought for money and come as a concubine and the girl who had started as a maid and been elevated to concubinage – there smouldered an unbearable envy of the showy trimmings of the wedding ceremony whereby a woman, amidst universal congratulation, became a lawful wife in the eyes of society; the envy was all the stronger in that they knew nothing of the world, having come as innocent girls, been initiated into womanhood by Shirakawa, and done their growing up all within the confines of this house.

‘This kimono looks as though it came from the pawnshop. Look – the red silk inside the sleeve has faded,’ said Yumi, turning back Suga’s long sleeve as she stood before her.

‘It’s been worn by somebody, hasn’t it? I’m sure the bride who wore it before couldn’t have been very happy, seeing that it got sent to the pawnshop.’

‘No more this bride,’ put in Suga, sighing as she slipped the heavy robe off her shoulders. She should not say such things on such an auspicious day, she felt, but a surge of resentment welled up in her against Michimasa and the contemptuous way he addressed her, as though she were some domestic animal.