THE LIGHTHOUSEShe did not know what he had done, when heheard that Andrew was killed, but she felt it inhim all the same. They only mumbled at eachother on staircases; they looked up at the skyand said it will be fine or it won’t be fine. Butthis was one way of knowing people, she thought:to know the outline, not the detail, to sit in one’sgarden and look at the slopes of a hill runningpurple 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 andmellow. It was about the desert and the camel.It was about the palm tree and the sunset. It wasextremely impersonal; it said something aboutdeath; it said very little about love. There was analoofness about him. He wanted very little ofother people. Had he not always lurched ratherawkwardly past the drawing-room window withsome newspaper under his arm, trying to avoidMrs. Ramsay whom for some reason he did notmuch like? On that account, of course, she wouldalways try to make him stop. He would bow toher. He would halt unwillingly and bow pro-foundly. Annoyed that he did not want anythingof her, Mrs. Ramsay would ask him (Lily couldhear her) wouldn’t he like a coat, a rug, a news-299
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