THE WINDOWcruelty, its unscrupulosity. It scorched her, andLily, looking at Minta being charming to Mr.Ramsay at the other end of the table, flinched forher exposed to those fangs, and was thankful.For at any rate, she said to herself, catching sightof the salt cellar on the pattern, she need notmarry, thank Heaven: she need not undergo thatdegradation. She was saved from that dilution.She would move the tree rather more to themiddle.

Such was the complexity of things. For whathappened to her, especially staying with theRamsays, was to be made to feel violently twoopposite things at the same time; that’s what youfeel, was one; that’s what I feel was the other,and then they fought together in her mind, as now.It is so beautiful, so exciting, this love, that Itremble on the verge of it, and offer, quite out ofmy own habit, to look for a brooch on a beach;also it is the stupidest, the most barbaric of humanpassions, and turns a nice young man with aprofile like a gem (Paul’s was exquisite) into abully with a crowbar (he was swaggering, he wasinsolent) in the Mile End Road. Yet she said toherself, from the dawn of time odes have beensung to love; wreaths heaped and roses; and ifyou asked nine people out of ten they would saythey wanted nothing but this; while the women,159
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