74 TO THE LIGHTHOUSEBut instantly she was annoyed with herself forsaying that. Who had said it? not she; she had beentrapped into saying something she did not mean.She looked up over her knitting and met the thirdstroke and it seemed to her like her own eyes meetingher own eyes, searching as she alone could searchinto her mind and her heart, purifying out of exis-tence that lie, any lie. She praised herself in praisingthe light, without vanity, for she was stern, she wassearching, she was beautiful like that light. It wasodd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant tothings, inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; feltthey expressed one; felt they became one; felt theyknew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrationaltenderness thus (she looked at that long steady light)as for oneself. There rose, and she looked and lookedwith her needles suspended, there curled up off thefloor of the mind, rose from the lake of one’s being, amist, a bride to meet her lover.

What brought her to say that: ‘We are in thehands of the Lord?' she wondered. The insincerityslipping in among the truths roused her, annoyed her.She returned to her knitting again. How could anyLord have made this world? she asked. With hermind she had always seized the fact that there is noreason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor.There was no treachery too base for the world to com-mit; she knew that. No happiness lasted; she knewthat. She knitted with firm composure, slightlypursing her lips and, without being aware of it, sostiffened and composed the lines of her face in a habitof sternness that when her husband passed, thoughhe was chuckling at the thought that Hume, the