TO THE LIGHTHOUSEunfathomably deep. Into them had spilled so manylives. The Ramsays’; the children’s; and all sortsof waifs and strays of things besides. A washer-woman with her basket; a rook, a red-hot poker;the purples and grey-greens of flowers: some com-mon feeling held the whole.

It was some such feeling of completeness per-haps which, ten years ago, standing almost whereshe stood now, had made her say that she must bein love with the place. Love had a thousand shapes.There might be lovers whose gift it was to chooseout the elements of things and place them togetherand so, giving them a wholeness not theirs in life,make of some scene, or meeting of people (all nowgone and separate), one of those globed compactedthings over which thought lingers, and love plays.

Her eyes rested on the brown speck of Mr.Ramsay’s sailing boat. They would be at the Light-house by lunch time she supposed. But the windhad freshened, and, as the sky changed slightly andthe sea changed slightly and the boats altered theirpositions, the view, which a moment before hadseemed miraculously fixed, was now unsatisfactory.The wind had blown the trail of smoke about; therewas something displeasing about the placing of theships.

The disproportion there seemed to upset some286
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