TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

‘It suddenly gets cold. The sun seems to give lessheat,’ she said, looking about her, for it was brightenough, the grass still a soft deep green, the housestarred in its greenery with purple passion flowers, androoks dropping cool cries from the high blue. Butsomething moved, flashed, turned a silver wing in theair. It was September after all, the middle of Septem-ber, and past six in the evening. So off they strolleddown the garden in the usual direction, past the tennislawn, past the pampas grass, to that break in the thickhedge, guarded by red-hot pokers like brasiers of clearburning coal, between which the blue waters of thebay looked bluer than ever.

They came there regularly every evening drawn bysome need. It was as if the water floated off and setsailing thoughts which had grown stagnant on dryland, and gave to their bodies even some sort of phy-sical relief. First, the pulse of colour flooded the baywith blue, and the heart expanded with it and thebody swam, only the next instant to be checked andchilled by the prickly blackness on the ruffled waves.Then, up behind the great black rock, almost everyevening spurted irregularly, so that one had to watchfor it and it was a delight when it came, a fountain ofwhite water; and then, while one waited for that, onewatched, on the pale semicircular beach, wave afterwave shedding again and again smoothly a film ofmother-of-pearl.

They both smiled, standing there. They both felt acommon hilarity, excited by the moving waves; andthen by the swift cutting race of a sailing boat, which,having sliced a curve in the bay, stopped; shivered;let its sail drop down; and then, with a natural in-26
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