TO THE LIGHTHOUSEthrough a glass and gone in again. So it was like that,James thought, the Lighthouse one had seen acrossthe bay all these years; it was a stark tower on a barerock. It satisfied him. It confirmed some obscure feel-ing of his about his own character. The old ladies, hethought, thinking of the garden at home, went drag-ging their chairs about on the lawn. Old Mrs. Beck-with, for example, was always saying how nice it wasand how sweet it was and how they ought to be soproud and they ought to be so happy, but as a matterof fact James thought, looking at the Lighthouse stoodthere on its rock, it’s like that. He looked at his fatherreading fiercely with his legs curled tight. They sharedthat knowledge. ‘We are driving before a gale — wemust sink,’ he began saying to himself, half aloudexactly as his father said it.

Nobody seemed to have spoken for an age. Cam wastired of looking at the sea. Little bits of black corkhad floated past; the fish were dead in the bottom ofthe boat. Still her father read, and James looked athim and she looked at him, and they vowed that theywould fight tyranny to the death, and he went onreading quite unconscious of what they thought. Itwas thus that he escaped, she thought. Yes, with hisgreat forehead and his great nose, holding his littlemottled book firmly in front of him, he escaped. Youmight try to lay hands on him, but then like a bird,he spread his wings, he floated off to settle out of yourreach somewhere far away on some desolate stump.She gazed at the immense expanse of the sea. Theisland had grown so small that it scarcely looked likea leaf any longer. It looked like the top of a rockwhich some big wave would cover. Yet in its frailty236

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