TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

Always, Mrs. Ramsay felt, one helped oneself out ofsolitude reluctantly by laying hold of some little oddor end, some sound, some sight. She listened, but itwas all very still; cricket was over; the children were intheir baths; there was only the sound of the sea. Shestopped knitting; she held the long reddish-brownstocking dangling in her hands a moment. She sawthe light again. With some irony in her interrogation,for when one woke at all, one’s relations changed,she looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the remorse-less, which was so much her, yet so little her, whichhad her at its beck and call (she woke in the nightand saw it bent across their bed, stroking the floor),but for all that she thought, watching it with fascina-tion, hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silverfingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose burstingwould flood her with delight, she had known happi-ness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it sil-vered the rough waves a little more brightly, as day-light faded, and the blue went out of the sea and itrolled in waves of pure lemon which curved andswelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasyburst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced overthe floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! Itis enough!

He turned and saw her. Ah! She was lovely, loveliernow than ever he thought. But he could not speak toher. He could not interrupt her. He wanted urgentlyto speak to her now that James was gone and she wasalone at last. But he resolved, no; he would not inter-rupt her. She was aloof from him now in her beauty,in her sadness. He would let her be, and he passedher without a word, though it hurt him that she78
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