THE LIGHTHOUSEwas a famous man now called Carmichael, shesmiled, thinking how many shapes one person mightwear, how he was that in the newspapers, but herethe same as he had always been. He looked the same—greyer, rather. Yes, he looked the same, but some-body had said, she recalled, that when he had heardof Andrew Ramsay’s death (he was killed in asecond by a shell; he should have been a greatmathematician) Mr. Carmichael had "lost all in-terest in life." What did it mean—that? she won-dered. Had he marched through Trafalgar Squaregrasping a big stick? Had he turned pages overand over, without reading them, sitting in his roomin St. John’s Wood alone? She did not know whathe had done, when he heard that Andrew waskilled, but she felt it in him all the same. They onlymumbled at each other on staircases; they lookedup at the sky and said it will be fine or it won’t befine. But this was one way of knowing people, shethought: to know the outline, not the detail, to sitin one’s garden and look at the slopes of a hill run-ning purple down into the distant heather. She knewhim in that way. She knew that he had changedsomehow. She had never read a line of his poetry.She thought that she knew how it went though,slowly and sonorously. It was seasoned and mellow.It was about the desert and the camel. It was about289
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