THE WINDOWLighthouse. He looked into the hedge, into itsintricacy, its darkness.Always, Mrs. Ramsay felt, one helped oneselfout of solitude reluctantly by laying hold of somelittle odd or end, some sound, some sight. Shelistened, but it was all very still; cricket was over;the children were in their baths; there was onlythe sound of the sea. She stopped knitting; sheheld the long reddish-brown stocking danglingin her hands a moment. She saw the lightagain. With some irony in her interrogation,for when one woke at all, one’s relations changed,she looked at the steady light, the pitiless,the remorseless, which was so much her, yetso little her, which had her at its beck andcall (she woke in the night and saw it bentacross their bed, stroking the floor), but forall that she thought, watching it with fascination,hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silverfingers some sealed vessel in her brain whosebursting would flood her with delight, she hadknown happiness, exquisite happiness, intensehappiness, and it silvered the rough waves a littlemore brightly, as daylight faded, and the bluewent out of the sea and it rolled in waves ofpure lemon which curved and swelled and brokeupon the beach and the ecstasy burst in hereyes and waves of pure delight raced over the103