TO THE LIGHTHOUSEenough, walking up and down, he hummed it,dropped it, fell silent.

He was safe, he was restored to his privacy.He stopped to light his pipe, looked once at hiswife and son in the window, and as one raises one’seyes from a page in an express train and sees afarm, a tree, a cluster of cottages as an illustration,a confirmation of something on the printed pageto which one returns, fortified, and satisfied, sowithout his distinguishing either his son or hiswife, the sight of them fortified him and satisfiedhim and consecrated his effort to arrive at aperfectly clear understanding of the problem whichnow engaged the energies of his splendid mind.

It was a splendid mind. For if thought is likethe keyboard of a piano, divided into so manynotes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-sixletters all in order, then his splendid mind hadno sort of difficulty in running over those lettersone by one, firmly and accurately, until it hadreached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q.Very few people in the whole of England everreach Q. Here, stopping for one moment bythe stone urn which held the geraniums, hesaw, but now far far away, like children pick-ing up shells, divinely innocent and occu-pied with little trifles at their feet and somehowentirely defenceless against a doom which he56
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