200 TO THE LIGHTHOUSEstairs about three o’clock in the morning. Paulcame out in his pyjamas carrying a poker in case ofburglars. Minta was eating a sandwich, standinghalf-way up by a window, in the cadaverous earlymorning light, and the carpet had a hole in it. Butwhat did they say? Lily asked herself, as if bylooking she could hear them. Something violent.Minta went on eating her sandwich, annoyingly,while he spoke. He spoke indignant, jealous words,abusing her, in a mutter so as not to wake the child-ren, the two little boys. He was withered, drawn;she flamboyant, careless. For things had workedloose after the first year or so; the marriage hadturned out rather badly.

And this, Lily thought, taking the green paint onher brush, this making up scenes about them, is whatwe call ‘knowing' people, ‘thinking' of them, ‘beingfond' of them! Not a word of it was true; she hadmade it up; but it was what she knew them by allthe same. She went on tunnelling her way into herpicture, into the past.

Another time, Paul said he ‘played chess in coffee-houses.’ She had built up a whole structure ofimagination on that saying too. She rememberedhow, as he said it, she thought how he rang up theservant, and she said ‘Mrs Rayley’s out, sir,' and hedecided that he would not come home either. Shesaw him sitting in the corner of some lugubriousplace where the smoke attached itself to the redplush seats, and the waitresses got to know you,playing chess with a little man who was in the teatrade and lived at Surbiton, but that was all Paulknew about him. And then Minta was out when he

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