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TO THE LIGHTHOUSEsent up in token of some celebration by savages on adistant beach. She heard the roar and the crackle.The whole sea for miles round ran red and gold.Some winy smell mixed with it and intoxicated her,for she felt again her own headlong desire to throwherself off the cliff and be drowned looking for apearl brooch on a beach. And the roar and the cracklerepelled her with fear and disgust, as if while she sawits splendour and power she saw too how it fed onthe treasure of the house, greedily, disgustingly, andshe loathed it. But for a sight, for a glory it surpassedeverything in her experience, and burnt year afteryear like a signal fire on a desert island at the edgeof the sea, and one had only to say ‘in love’ and in-stantly, as happened now, up rose Paul’s fire again.And it sank and she said to herself, laughing, ‘TheRayleys’; how Paul went to coffee-houses and playedchess.)
She had only escaped by the skin of her teeththough, she thought. She had been looking at thetable-cloth, and it had flashed upon her that shewould move the tree to the middle, and need nevermarry anybody, and she had felt an enormous ex-ultation. She had felt, now she could stand up to Mrs.Ramsay — a tribute to the astonishing power thatMrs. Ramsay had over one. Do this, she said, andone did it. Even her shadow at the window withJames was full of authority. She remembered howWilliam Bankes had been shocked by her neglect ofthe significance of mother and son. Did she not ad-mire their beauty? he said. But William, she remem-bered, had listened to her with his wise child’s eyeswhen she explained how it was not irreverence: how204
