TO THE LIGHTHOUSEspectacles and laughed at them. What they saidshe could not remember, but only she and Charlesthrowing stones and getting on very well all of asudden and Mrs. Ramsay watching them. Shewas highly conscious of that. Mrs. Ramsay, shethought, stepping back and screwing up her eyes.(It must have altered the design a good deal whenshe was sitting on the step with James. Theremust have been a shadow.) Mrs. Ramsay. Whenshe thought of herself and Charles throwingducks and drakes and of the whole scene onthe beach, it seemed to depend somehow uponMrs. Ramsay sitting under the rock, with a padon her knee, writing letters. (She wrote in-numerable letters, and sometimes the wind tookthem and she and Charles just saved a page fromthe sea.) But what a power was in the humansoul! she thought. That woman sitting there,writing under the rock resolved everything intosimplicity; made these angers, irritations fall offlike old rags; she brought together this and thatand then this, and so made out of that miserablesilliness and spite (she and Charles squabbling,sparring, had been silly and spiteful) something—this scene on the beach for example, thismoment of friendship and liking—which sur-vived, after all these years, complete, so that shedipped into it to re-fashion her memory of him,248
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