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TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

Filled with her words, like a child who dropsoff satisfied, he said, at last, looking at her withhumble gratitude, restored, renewed, that hewould take a turn; he would watch the childrenplaying cricket. He went.

Immediately, Mrs. Ramsay seemed to foldherself together, one petal closed in another, andthe whole fabric fell in exhaustion upon itself,so that she had only strength enough to move herfinger, in exquisite abandonment to exhaustion,across the page of Grimm’s fairy story, while therethrobbed through her, like the pulse in a springwhich has expanded to its full width and nowgently ceases to beat, the rapture of successfulcreation.

Every throb of this pulse seemed, as he walkedaway, to enclose her and her husband, and to giveto each that solace which two different notes, onehigh, one low, struck together, seem to give eachother as they combine. Yet, as the resonancedied, and she turned to the Fairy Tale again, Mrs.Ramsay felt not only exhausted in body (after-wards, not at the time, she always felt this) butalso there tinged her physical fatigue some faintlydisagreeable sensation with another origin. Notthat, as she read aloud the story of the Fisherman’sWife, she knew precisely what it came from; nordid she let herself put into words her dissatis-64