On fine days Miya would gaze out from the second floor over the sea off Shinagawa and rejoice like a child: it was so cheerful here in this house on the hill, she said, after her own home which was shut in on every side by other dwellings.

Miya was reputed to be good at singing ballads in the tokiwazu style, so one evening they had her sing the ballad of the unhappy lovers Osono and Rokusa on their way to die together. Yumi, who was trained in the same tokiwazu style, accompanied her on the samisen. Gradually, as she gently related the dialogue of the doomed couple in a voice that was strong and steady yet full of feminine charm, her eyebrows began to contract and her white throat to strain in strangled sobs, till despite themselves the listeners were half persuaded that Miya herself had become Osono, and were overcome by a kind of sensuous sorrow. Coming to the end of the scene, Miya was combing back the loose strands of hair and wiping her damp forehead with a handkerchief when Michimasa, who had drunk too much saké, vomited copiously on the tatami and was carried out into the anteroom.

Frowning, Miya made reluctantly to get up, but when Yukitomo told her to leave it to the maids she looked pleased and came happily to sit by her father-in-law’s side.

‘Let me help you to some saké. My awful singing has made the young master sick,’ she said, holding the china bottle poised on her upturned palm in a seductive manner that came as a vague shock to Tomo sitting next to her, so much did it remind her of a young and newly qualified geisha.

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Your singing almost made me feel like the hero of a love suicide myself. Everybody’s sitting very quiet, aren’t they? Here, now, have a drink. Somehow I think you’re a good drinker.’

He gave her his own saké cup and filled it to the brim for her. Ever since she came as a bride she had refrained from indulging her taste for saké, but now at Yukitomo’s instigation she drank several cupfuls in succession, so that her eyes grew faintly pink at the corners and her face acquired so much the air of a full-blown flower that Suga could not help drawing Yumi’s attention to it with a meaningful glance.