THE WINDOW 119memory, tinged by dreams. He shook his head.'On the beach,’ he said.

‘I'm going to find it,’ he said, 'I’m getting upearly.' This being kept secret from Minta, helowered his voice, and turned his eyes to where shesat, laughing, beside Mr Ramsay.

Lily wanted to protest violently and outrageouslyher desire to help him, envisaging how in the dawnon the beach she would be the one to pounce on thebrooch half-hidden by some stone, and thus herselfbe included among the sailors and adventurers. Butwhat did he reply to her offer? She actually saidwith an emotion that she seldom let appear: ‘Letme come with you’; and he laughed. He meantyes or no—either perhaps. But it was not his mean-

ing—it was the odd chuckle he gave, as if he had said,

Throw yourself over the cliff if you like, I don’t care.

He turned on her cheek the heat of love, its horror,its cruelty, its unscrupulosity. It scorched her, andLily, looking at Minta being charming to Mr Ramsayat the other end of the table, flinched for her exposedto those fangs, and was thankful. For at any rate,she said to herself, catching sight of the salt cellar onthe pattern, she need not marry, thank Heaven:she need not undergo that degradation. She wassaved from that dilution. She would move the treerather more to the middle.

Such was the complexity of things. For whathappened to her, especially staying with the Ram-says, was to be made to feel violently two oppositethings at the same time; that’s what you feel, wasone; that's what I feel was the other, and then theyfought together in her mind, as now. It is so
Resize Images  

Select Pane

Berg Materials
 

View Pane