60 TO THE LIGHTHOUSEherself, did one know one thing or another thingabout people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee,drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air in-tangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over thecountries of the world alone, and then hauntedthe hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; thehives which were people. Mrs Ramsay rose. Lilyrose. Mrs Ramsay went. For days there hungabout her, as after a dream some subtle change isfelt in the person one has dreamt of, more vividlythan anything she said, the sound of murmuring and,as she sat in the wicker arm-chair in the drawing-room window she wore, to Lily’s eyes, an augustshape; the shape of a dome.

This ray passed level with Mr Bankes’s ray straightto Mrs Ramsay sitting reading there with James ather knee. But now while she still looked, Mr Bankeshad done. He had put on his spectacles. He hadstepped back. He had raised his hand. He hadslightly narrowed his clear blue eyes, when Lily,rousing herself, saw what he was at, and winced likea dog who sees a hand raised to strike it. She wouldhave snatched her picture off the easel, but she saidto herself, One must. She braced herself to standthe awful trial of someone looking at her picture.One must, she said, one must. And if it must beseen, Mr Bankes was less alarming than another.But that any other eyes should see the residue of herthirty-three years, the deposit of each day’s living,mixed with something more secret than she had everspoken or shown in the course of all those days was anagony. At the same time it was immensely exciting.

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