TO THE LIGHTHOUSEor so; the marriage had turned out rather badly.

And this, Lily thought, taking the green painton her brush, this making up scenes about them,is what we call "knowing" people, "thinking" ofthem, "being fond" of them! Not a word of it wastrue; she had made it up; but it was what she knewthem by all the same. She went on tunnelling herway into her picture, into the past.

Another time, Paul said he "played chess in coffee-houses." She had built up a whole structure ofimagination on that saying too. She rememberedhow, as he said it, she thought how he rang up theservant, and she said, "Mrs. Rayley's out, sir," andhe decided that he would not come home either. Shesaw him sitting in the corner of some lugubriousplace where the smoke attached itself to the redplush seats, and the waitresses got to know you,and he played chess with a little man who was inthe tea trade and lived at Surbiton, but that wasall Paul knew about him. And then Minta was outwhen he came home and then there was that sceneon the stairs, when he got the poker in case ofburglars (no doubt to frighten her too) and spokeso bitterly, saying she had ruined his life. At anyrate when she went down to see them at a cottagenear Rickmansworth, things were horribly strained.Paul took her down the garden to look at the258
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