TO THE LIGHTHOUSEsaw, so that while her hand quivered with life, thisrhythm was strong enough to bear her along withit on its current. Certainly she was losing conscious-ness of outer things. And as she lost consciousnessof outer things, and her name and her personalityand her appearance, and whether Mr. Carmichaelwas there or not, her mind kept throwing up from itsdepths, scenes, and names, and sayings, and mem-ories and ideas, like a fountain spurting over thatglaring, hideously difficult white space, while shemodelled it with greens and blues.

Charles Tansley used to say that, she remem-bered, women can't paint, can't write. Coming upbehind her, he had stood close beside her, a thing shehated, as she painted here on this very spot. "Shagtobacco," he said, "fivepence an ounce," paradinghis poverty, his principles. (But the war had drawnthe sting of her femininity. Poor devils, one thought,poor devils, of both sexes.) He was always carryinga book about under his arm—a purple book. He"worked." He sat, she remembered, working in ablaze of sun. At dinner he would sit right in themiddle of the view. But after all, she reflected, therewas the scene on the beach. One must rememberthat. It was a windy morning. They had all gonedown to the beach. Mrs. Ramsay sat down andwrote letters by a rock. She wrote and wrote. "Oh,"238
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