MOON

The shutters on the west side of the house were down, although the gentle-women had left one or two open so as not to risk appearing unfriendly. The moon was out, illumining a thin fall of snow, and it was actually a lovely night. He recalled with amusement having heard those same simperings of old age cited as a bane.

That evening he addressed the former Kamo Priestess very earnestly. “I shall trouble you no more if only you will master your repugnance and speak to me this once yourself,” he said, going straight to the point; but she who even long ago, when the world gladly overlooked their youthful indiscretions, had still shrunk bashfully from her late father’s ambition could not all these years later, at her age, countenance giving him a single word in her own voice, and she maintained this resolve so staunchly that Genji became extremely impatient.

(The Tale of Genji, chap. 20, pp. 370-371)