TO THE LIGHTHOUSEonly strength enough to move her finger, in exquisiteabandonment to exhaustion, across the page ofGrimm’s fairy story, while there throbbed through her,like the pulse in a spring which has expanded to itsfull width and now gently ceases to beat, the raptureof successful creation.

Every throb of this pulse seemed, as he walked away,to enclose her and her husband, and to give to eachthat solace which two different notes, one high, onelow, struck together, seem to give each other as theycombine. Yet, as the resonance died, and she turnedto the Fairy Tale again, Mrs. Ramsay felt not onlyexhausted in body (afterwards, not at the time, shealways felt this) but also there tinged her physical fa-tigue some faintly disagreeable sensation with anotherorigin. Not that, as she read aloud the story of theFisherman’s Wife, she knew precisely what it camefrom; nor did she let herself put into words her dis-satisfaction when she realised, at the turn of the pagewhen she stopped and heard dully, ominously, a wavefall, how it came from this: she did not like, even fora second, to feel finer than her husband; and further,could not bear not being entirely sure, when she spoketo him, of the truth of what she said. Universities andpeople wanting him, lectures and books and theirbeing of the highest importance — all that she did notdoubt for a moment; but it was their relation, and hiscoming to her like that, openly, so that anyone couldsee, that discomposed her; for then people said he de-pended on her, when they must know that of the twohe was infinitely the more important, and what shegave the world, in comparison with what he gave,negligible. But then again, it was the other thing too48
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