TO THE LIGHTHOUSEfragments, frightened, effusive, tumultuous, aflock of starlings.

"Jasper!" said Mr. Bankes. They turnedthe way the starlings flew, over the terrace.Following the scatter of swift-flying birds in thesky they stepped through the gap in the highhedge straight into Mr. Ramsay, who boomedtragically at them, “Someone had blundered!"

His eyes, glazed with emotion, defiant withtragic intensity, met theirs for a second, andtrembled on the verge of recognition; but then,raising his hand half-way to his face as if to avert,to brush off, in an agony of peevish shame, theirnormal gaze, as if he begged them to withhold fora moment what he knew to be inevitable, as if heimpressed upon them his own child-like resent-ment of interruption, yet even in the moment ofdiscovery was not to be routed utterly, but wasdetermined to hold fast to something of thisdelicious emotion, this impure rhapsody of whichhe was ashamed, but in which he revelled—heturned abruptly, slammed his private door onthem; and, Lily Briscoe and Mr. Bankes, lookinguneasily up into the sky, observed that the flockof starlings which Jasper had routed with his gunhad settled on the tops of the elm trees.44
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