THE WINDOW

Already ashamed of that petulance, of that gesticu-lation of the hands when charging at the head of histroops, Mr. Ramsay rather sheepishly prodded hisson’s bare legs once more, and then, as if he had herleave for it, with a movement which oddly remindedhis wife of the great sea lion at the Zoo tumbling back-wards after swallowing his fish and walloping off sothat the water in the tank washes from side to side, hedived into the evening air which, already thinner, wastaking the substance from leaves and hedges but, as ifin return, restoring to roses and pinks a lustre whichthey had not had by day.

‘Someone had blundered,’ he said again, stridingoff, up and down the terrace.

But how extraordinarily his note had changed! Itwas like the cuckoo; ‘in June he gets out of tune’; asif he were trying over, tentatively seeking, some phrasefor a new mood, and having only this at hand, usedit, cracked though it was. But it sounded ridiculous —‘Someone had blundered’ — said like that, almost asa question, without any conviction, melodiously.Mrs. Ramsay could not help smiling, and soon,sure enough, walking up and down, he hummed it,dropped it, fell silent.

He was safe, he was restored to his privacy. Hestopped to light his pipe, looked once at his wife andson in the window, and as one raises one’s eyes froma page in an express train and sees a farm, a tree, acluster of cottages as an illustration, a confirmation ofsomething on the printed page to which one returns,fortified, and satisfied, so without his distinguishingeither his son or his wife, the sight of them fortifiedhim and satisfied him and consecrated his effort to41
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