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TO THE LIGHTHOUSEAugustus Carmichael, must feel, our apparitions,the things you know us by, are simply childish.Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it isunfathomably deep; but now and again we riseto the surface and that is what you see us by.Her horizon seemed to her limitless. Therewere all the places she had not seen; the Indianplains; she felt herself pushing aside the thickleather curtain of a church in Rome. This core ofdarkness could go anywhere, for no one saw it.They could not stop it, she thought, exulting.There was freedom, there was peace, there was,most welcome of all, a summoning together, aresting on a platform of stability. Not as oneselfdid one find rest ever, in her experience (she accom-plished here something dexterous with her needles),but as a wedge of darkness. Losing personality,one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and thererose to her lips always some exclamation oftriumph over life when things came together inthis peace, this rest, this eternity; and pausingthere she looked out to meet that stroke of theLighthouse, the long steady stroke, the last of thethree, which was her stroke, for watching them inthis mood always at this hour one could not helpattaching oneself to one thing especially of thethings one saw; and this thing, the long steadystroke, was her stroke. Often she found herself100