THE WINDOWthough she was only telling him a fact about a train,"like that of which she moulded you." He saw her atthe end of the line very clearly Greek, straight, blue-eyed. How incongruous it seemed to be telephoningto a woman like that. The Graces assembling seemedto have joined hands in meadows of asphodel to com-pose that face. He would catch the 10:30 at Euston.

"Yet she’s no more aware of her beauty than achild," said Mr. Bankes, replacing the receiver andcrossing the room to see what progress the work-men were making with an hotel which they werebuilding at the back of his house. And he thoughtof Mrs. Ramsay as he looked at that stir among theunfinished walls. For always, he thought, there wassomething incongruous to be worked into the har-mony of her face. She clapped a deer-stalker’s haton her head; she ran across the lawn in goloshes tosnatch a child from mischief. So that if it was herbeauty merely that one thought of, one must remem-ber the quivering thing, the living thing (they werecarrying bricks up a little plank as he watchedthem), and work it into the picture; or if onethought of her simply as a woman, one must en-dow her with some freak of idiosyncrasy—she didnot like admiration—or suppose some latent desireto doff her royalty of form as if her beauty boredher and all that men say of beauty, and she wanted47
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