Always, Mrs. Ramsay felt, one helped oneselfout of solitude reluctantly by laying hold of somelittle odd or end, some sound, some sight. Shelistened, but it was all very still; cricket was over;the children were in their baths; there was onlythe sound of the sea. She stopped knitting; sheheld the long reddish-brown stocking dangling inher hands a moment. She saw the light again. Withsome irony in her interrogation, for when one wokeat all, one’s relations changed, she looked at thesteady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which wasso much her, yet so little her, which had her at itsbeck and call (she woke in the night and saw itbent across their bed, stroking the floor), but forall that she thought, watching it with fascination,hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silverfingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose burst-ing would flood her with delight, she had knownhappiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness,and it silvered the rough waves a little morebrightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went outof the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon99