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THE LIGHTHOUSEloose after the first year or so; the marriage hadgal67turned out rather badly.And this, Lily thought, taking the green painton her brush, this making up scenes about them,is what we call “knowing” people, “thinking”of them, “being fond” of them! Not a word ofit was true; she had made it up; but it was whatshe knew them by all the same. She went ontunnelling her way into her picture, into thepast.Another time, Paul said he “played chess incoffee—houses”. She had built up a wholestructure of imagination on that saying too. Sheremembered how, as he said it, she thought howhe rang up the servant, and she said “Mrs.Rayley’s out, sir”, and he decided that he wouldnot come home either. She saw him sitting inthe corner of some lugubrious place where thesmoke attached itself to the red plush seats, andthe waitresses got to know you, and[∧]he /playingedchesswith a little man who was in the tea trade andlived at Surbiton, but that was all Paul knew abouthim. And then Minta was out when he camehome and then there was that scene on the stairs,when he got the poker in case of burglars (nodoubt to frighten her too) and spoke so bitterly,saying she had ruined his life. At any rate whenshe went down to see them at a cottage near267
