THE WINDOWof a trophy fetched from the bottom of the sea, ofNeptune’s banquet, of the bunch that hangs with vineleaves over the shoulder of Bacchus (in some picture),among the leopard skins and the torches lolloping redand gold. . . Thus brought up suddenly into the lightit seemed possessed of great size and depth, was likea world in which one could take one’s staff and climbup hills, she thought, and go down into valleys, andto her pleasure (for it brought them into sympathymomentarily) she saw that Augustus too feasted hiseyes on the same plate of fruit, plunged in, broke offa bloom there, a tassel here, and returned, after feast-ing, to his hive. That was his way of looking, differ-ent from hers. But looking together united them.

Now all the candles were lit, and the faces on bothsides of the table were brought nearer by the candlelight, and composed, as they had not been in thetwilight, into a party round a table, for the night wasnow shut off by panes of glass, which, far from givingany accurate view of the outside world, rippled it sostrangely that here, inside the room, seemed to beorder and dry land; there, outside, a reflection inwhich things wavered and vanished, waterily.

Some change at once went through them all, as ifthis had really happened, and they were all consciousof making a party together in a hollow, on an island;had their common cause against that fluidity outthere. Mrs. Ramsay, who had been uneasy, waitingfor Paul and Minta to come in, and unable, she felt,to settle to things, now felt her uneasiness changed toexpectation. For now they must come, and Lily Bris-coe, trying to analyse the cause of the sudden exhila-ration, compared it with that moment on the tennis115

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