228 TO THE LIGHTHOUSEmaking her nest in its heart. And this, like all in-stincts, was a little distressing to people who did notshare it; to Mr Carmichael perhaps, to herself cer-tainly. Some notion was in both of them about theineffectiveness of action, the supremacy of thought.Her going was a reproach to them, gave a differenttwist to the world, so that they were led to protest,seeing their own prepossessions disappear, and clutchat them vanishing. Charles Tansley did that too: itwas part of the reason why one disliked him. Heupset the proportions of one's world. And what hadhappened to him, she wondered, idly stirring theplantains with her brush. He had got his fellowship.He had married; he lived at Golder’s Green.

She had gone one day into a hall and heard himspeaking during the War. He was denouncing some-thing: he was condemning somebody. He waspreaching brotherly love. And all she felt was howcould he love his kind who did not know one picturefrom another, who had stood behind her smokingshag (‘fivepence an ounce, Miss Briscoe’) and makingit his business to tell her women can’t write, womencan’t paint, not so much that he believed it, as thatfor some odd reason he wished it? There he was,lean and red and raucous, preaching love from aplatform (there were ants crawling about among theplantains which she disturbed with her brush—red,energetic ants, rather like Charles Tansley). Shehad looked at him ironically from her seat in thehalf-empty hall, pumping love into that chilly space,and suddenly, there was the old cask or whatever itwas bobbing up and down among the waves andMrs Ramsay looking for her spectacle case among

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