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TO THE LIGHTHOUSElittle space of sky which sleeps beside themoon.

Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Was it,once more, the deceptiveness of beauty, so thatall one’s perceptions, half-way to truth, weretangled in a golden mesh? or did she lock upwithin her some secret which certainly LilyBriscoe believed people must have for the worldto go on at all? Every one could not be as helter-skelter, hand to mouth as she was. But if theyknew, could they tell one what they knew?Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs.Ramsay’s knees, close as she could get, smilingto think that Mrs. Ramsay would never know thereason of that pressure, she imagined how in thechambers of the mind and heart of the womanwho was, physically, touching her, were stood,like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tabletsbearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spellthem out would teach one everything, but theywould never be offered openly, never made public.What art was there, known to love or cunning,by which one pressed through into those secretchambers? What device for becoming, like waterspoured into one jar, inextricably the same, onewith the object one adored? Could the bodyachieve it, or the mind, subtly mingling in theintricate passages of the brain? or the heart?82