TO THE LIGHTHOUSEseriously a story; it was the sense of adventureand escape that she wanted, for she was thinking,as the boat sailed on, how her father’s anger aboutthe points of the compass, James’s obstinacy aboutthe compact, and her own anguish, all had slipped,all had passed, all had streamed away. What thencame next? Where were they going? From herhand, ice cold, held deep in the sea, there spurtedup a fountain of joy at the change, at the escape,at the adventure (that she should be alive, that sheshould be there). And the drops falling from thissudden and unthinking fountain of joy fell hereand there on the dark, the slumbrous shapes inher mind; shapes of a world not realised butturning in their darkness, catching here and there,a spark of light; Greece, Rome, Constantinople.Small as it was, and shaped something like a leafstood on end with the gold sprinkled watersflowing in and about it, it had, she supposed, aplace in the universe—even that little island?The old gentlemen in the study she thoughtcould have told her. Sometimes she strayed infrom the garden purposely to catch them at it.There they were (it might be Mr. Carmichael orMr. Bankes, very old, very stiff) sitting oppositeeach other in their low arm-chairs. They werecrackling in front of them the pages of TheTimes, when she came in from the garden, all in290
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