TO THE LIGHTHOUSEevery year, she felt the same thing; he did not trusther. She said, ‘I am going to the town. Shall I getyou stamps, paper, tobacco?’ and she felt him wince.He did not trust her. It was his wife’s doing. She re-membered that iniquity of his wife’s towards him,which had made her turn to steel and adamant there,in the horrid little room in St. John’s Wood, when withher own eyes she had seen that odious woman turnhim out of the house. He was unkempt; he droppedthings on his coat; he had the tiresomeness of an oldman with nothing in the world to do; and she turnedhim out of the room. She said, in her odious way,‘Now, Mrs. Ramsay and I want to have a little talktogether,’ and Mrs. Ramsay could see, as if before hereyes, the innumerable miseries of his life. Had hemoney enough to buy tobacco? Did he have to ask herfor it? half a crown? eighteenpence? Oh, she could notbear to think of the little indignities she made himsuffer. And always now (why, she could not guess,except that it came probably from that woman some-how) he shrank from her. He never told her any-thing. But what more could she have done? There wasa sunny room given up to him. The children were goodto him. Never did she show a sign of not wanting him.She went out of her way indeed to be friendly. Do youwant stamps, do you want tobacco? Here’s a bookyou might like and so on. And after all — after all(here insensibly she drew herself together, physically,the sense of her own beauty becoming, as it did soseldom, present to her) — after all, she had not gener-ally any difficulty in making people like her; for in-stance, George Manning; Mr. Wallace; famous as theywere, they would come to her of an evening, quietly,50
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