Charles Tansley used to say that, she remembered,women can’t paint, can’t write. Coming up behindher he had stood close beside her, a thing she hated,as she painted here on this very spot. ‘Shag tobacco,'he said, ‘fivepence an ounce,’ parading his poverty,his principles. (But the war had drawn the stingof her femininity. Poor devils, one thought, poordevils of both sexes, getting into such messes.) Hewas always carrying a book about under his arm—apurple book. He ‘worked.’ He sat, she remem-bered, working in a blaze of sun. At dinner hewould sit right in the middle of the view. And then,she reflected, there was that scene on the beach. Onemust remember that. It was a windy morning.They had all gone to the beach. Mrs Ramsay satand wrote letters by a rock. She wrote and wrote.'Oh,’ she said, looking up at last at something float-ing in the sea, ‘is it a lobster pot? Is it an upturnedboat?' She was so short-sighted that she could not