THE LIGHTHOUSEshoved up, a blade would be flashed. It was non-sense of course.A curious notion came to her that he did after allhear the things she could not say. He was an in-scrutable old man, with the yellow stain on hisbeard, and his poetry, and his puzzles, sailingserenely through a world which satisfied all hiswants, so that she thought he had only to put downhis hand where he lay on the lawn to fish up anythinghe wanted. She looked at her picture. That wouldhave been his answer, presumably—how "you" and"I" and "she" pass and vanish; nothing stays; allchanges; but not words, not paint. Yet it would behung in the attics, she thought; it would be rolledup and flung under a sofa; yet even so, even of apicture like that, it was true. One might say, evenof this scrawl, not of that actual picture, perhaps,but of what it attempted, that it "remained forever," she was going to say, or, for the words spokensounded even to herself, too boastful, to hint, word-lessly; when, looking at the picture, she was sur-prised to find that she could not see it. Her eyes werefull of a hot liquid (she did not think of tears atfirst) which, without disturbing the firmness of herlips, made the air thick, rolled down her cheeks.She had perfect control of herself—Oh, yes!—inevery other way. Was she crying then for Mrs.267