TO THE LIGHTHOUSEsince she saw them like that, fashionable though itwas, since Mr. Paunceforte’s visit, to see everythingpale, elegant, semitransparent. Then beneath thecolour there was the shape. She could see it all soclearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it waswhen she took her brush in hand that the whole thingchanged. It was in that moment’s flight between thepicture and her canvas that the demons set on herwho often brought her to the verge of tears andmade this passage from conception to work as dread-ful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such sheoften felt herself—struggling against terrific odds tomaintain her courage; to say: "But this is what Isee; this is what I see," and so to clasp some miser-able remnant of her vision to her breast, which athousand forces did their best to pluck from her.And it was then too, in that chill and windy way, asshe began to paint, that there forced themselvesupon her other things, her own inadequacy, her in-significance, keeping house for her father off theBrompton Road, and had much ado to control herimpulse to fling herself (thank Heaven she had al-ways resisted so far) at Mrs. Ramsay’s knee andsay to her—but what could one say to her? "I’m inlove with you?" No, that was not true. "I’m in lovewith this all," waving her hand at the hedge, atthe house, at the children. It was absurd, it was32
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