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TIME PASSES 153assemble outwardly the scattered parts of the visionwithin. In those mirrors, the minds of men, in thosepools of uneasy water, in which clouds for ever turnand shadows form, dreams persisted, and it wasimpossible to resist the strange intimation whichevery gull, flower, tree, man, and woman, and thewhite earth itself seemed to declare (but if questionedat once to withdraw) that good triumphs, happinessprevails, order rules; or to resist the extraordinarystimulus to range hither and thither in search ofsome absolute good, some crystal of intensity, remotefrom the known pleasures and familiar virtues, some-thing alien to the processes of domestic life, single,hard, bright, like a diamond in the sand, whichwould render the possessor secure. Moreover,softened and acquiescent, the spring with her beeshumming and gnats dancing threw her cloak abouther, veiled her eyes, averted her head, and amongpassing shadows and flights of small rain seemed tohave taken upon her a knowledge of the sorrowsof mankind.

[Prue Ramsay died that summer in some illnessconnected with childbirth, which was indeed atragedy, people said. They said nobody deservedhappiness more.]

And now in the heat of summer the wind sent itsspies about the house again. Flies wove a web inthe sunny rooms; weeds that had grown close to theglass in the night tapped methodically at the windowpane. When darkness fell, the stroke of the Light-house, which had laid itself with such authority uponthe carpet in the darkness, tracing its pattern, camenow in the softer light of spring mixed with moon-