THE WINDOWroom and then she knew instantly by the way someman looked at her. Yes, to-night she had it, tremend-ously; she knew that by the way Mr. Ramsay toldher not to be a fool. She sat beside him, smiling.

It must have happened then, thought Mrs. Ram-say; they are engaged. And for a moment she feltwhat she had never expected to feel again — jeal-ousy. For he, her husband, felt it too — Minta’s glow;he liked these girls, these golden-reddish girls, withsomething flying, something a little wild and harum-scarum about them, who didn’t ‘scrape their hairoff', weren’t, as he said about poor Lily Briscoe,‘skimpy’. There was some quality which she herselfhad not, some lustre, some richness, which attractedhim, amused him, led him to make favourites of girlslike Minta. They might cut his hair for him, plaithim watch-chains, or interrupt him at his work, hail-ing him (she heard them), ‘Come along, Mr. Ram-say; it’s our turn to beat them now,’ and out hecame to play tennis.

But indeed she was not jealous, only, now and then,when she made herself look in her glass, a little re-sentful that she had grown old, perhaps, by her ownfault. (The bill for the greenhouse and all the restof it.) She was grateful to them for laughing at him.(‘How many pipes have you smoked to-day, Mr.Ramsay?’ and so on), till he seemed a young man;a man very attractive to women, not burdened, notweighed down with the greatness of his labours andthe sorrows of the world and his fame or his failure,but again as she had first known him, gaunt but gal-lant; helping her out of a boat, she remembered; withdelightful ways, like that (she looked at him, and he117

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