195121She set her canv clean canvas upon the easel, as to protection hertoMay2 31stagainst from Mr. Ramsay & his exactingness.Let him be on a terrace, let him not even speak to you, & yethis presence permeated, pervaded. One could not ignore him,forgeteven at the end of the terrace, with his back turned. He would bedown on her in a moment demanding - She chose rejected onebrush, chose another. Where other people (all women it seemed to her)poured out life gave, he did not give. He was sealed, intact; sheShe like all womenporous He did not give.He asked, he demanded. Like a sealedvessel, he kept his virtue in him.She, women, porous gave, gave, gave:life flowed like blood from a wound.Thus giving Mrs.Ramsay had died; & left nothingWhat had Mrs. Ramsay left?Lily Briscoe, flourish with her brush trembling slightly in herhand looked at the scene which she was going to paint -fingersNo thing, thought Lily Briscoe; th there she had sat, with James,ten years ago. Now she was gone.But why repeat these this? Why try to bring up from a bealways trying to bring up some feeling one had not? Whyamong all the feelings which all the rest she felt awithperfectly inadmissible irritation against the Ramsays,They had her at their mercy. She ought not to have come.They ought not to ask all this; she ought not to have come. And atforty four, she thought, one cannot waste weeks on when one is 44.For she was utterly unable to concentrate her mind on what she wasdoing. No thing so annoyed her as She held a brush; butlike thisit was irritating to hold a brushmerely for show; a brush, theinstrument of such rapture, to be treat be treated the onlyentirely dependable thing, in a world of chaos, a world ofworry, vexation, trivial daily implacable worry: that oneshould not trifle with.but he made her.Hewas bearing down on her.Women cant paint womencan't write - she remembered Charles Tansley s saying that& if he had been here, she would have said w And whynot? Well, thought Lily, giving herself up in despair,it upthinking herself lost, putting her l letting her hand fall in
