TO THE LIGHTHOUSEme come with you," and he laughed. He meant yesor no—either perhaps. But it was not his meaning—it was the odd chuckle he gave, as if he had said,Throw yourself over the cliff if you like, I don’tcare. He turned on her cheek the heat of love, itshorror, its cruelty, its unscrupulosity. It scorchedher, and Lily, looking at Minta, being charming toMr. Ramsay at the other end of the table, flinchedfor her exposed to these fangs, and was thankful.For at any rate, she said to herself, catching sightof the salt cellar on the pattern, she need not marry,thank Heaven: she need not undergo that degrada-tion. She was saved from that dilution. She wouldmove the tree rather more to the middle.

Such was the complexity of things. For what hap-pened to her, especially staying with the Ramsays,was to be made to feel violently two opposite thingsat the same time; that’s what you feel, was one;that’s what I feel, was the other, and then theyfought together in her mind, as now. It is so beau-tiful, so exciting, this love, that I tremble on theverge of it, and offer, quite out of my own habit,to look for a brooch on a beach; also it is the stupid-est, the most barbaric of human passions, and turnsa nice young man with a profile like a gem’s (Paul’swas exquisite) into a bully with a crowbar (he wasswaggering, he was insolent) in the Mile End Road.154
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