THE WINDOWMr. Bankes to say, bitterly, how she was a favourite.There was education now to be considered (true,Mrs. Ramsay had something of her own perhaps) letalone the daily wear and tear of shoes and stockingswhich those ‘great fellows’, all well grown, angular,ruthless youngsters, must require. As for being surewhich was which, or in what order they came, thatwas beyond him. He called them privately after theKings and Queens of England; Cam the Wicked,James the Ruthless, Andrew the Just, Prue the Fair— for Prue would have beauty, he thought, how couldshe help it? — and Andrew brains. While he walkedup the drive and Lily Briscoe said yes and no andcapped his comments (for she was in love with themall, in love with this world) he weighed Ramsay’s case,commiserated him, envied him, as if he had seen himdivest himself of all those glories of isolation and aus-terity which crowned him in youth to cumber himselfdefinitely with fluttering wings and clucking domes-ticities. They gave him something — William Bankesacknowledged that; it would have been pleasant ifCam had stuck a flower in his coat or clambered overhis shoulder, as over her father’s, to look at a pictureof Vesuvius in eruption; but they had also, his oldfriends could not but feel, destroyed something. Whatwould a stranger think now? What did this Lily Bris-coe think? Could one help noticing that habits grewon him? eccentricities, weaknesses perhaps? It wasastonishing that a man of his intellect could stoop solow as he did — but that was too harsh a phrase â€”could depend so much as he did upon people’s praise.

‘Oh but,’ said Lily, ‘think of his work!'

Whenever she ‘thought of his work’ she always saw29
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