THE WINDOWwhere one could move or rest; could wait now (theywere all helped) listening; could then, like a hawkwhich lapses suddenly from its high station, flauntand sink on laughter easily, resting her whole weightupon what at the other end of the table her husbandwas saying about the square root of one thousandtwo hundred and fifty-three, which happened to bethe number on his railway ticket.

What did it all mean? To this day she had nonotion. A square root? What was that? Her sons knew.She leant on them; on cubes and square roots; thatwas what they were talking about now; on Voltaireand Madame de Staël; on the character of Napo-leon; on the French system of land tenure; on LordRosebery; on Creevey’s Memoirs; she let it upholdher and sustain her, this admirable fabric of the mas-culine intelligence, which ran up and down, crossedthis way and that, like iron girders spanning theswaying fabric, upholding the world, so that shecould trust herself to it utterly, even shut her eyes,or flicker them for a moment, as a child staring upfrom its pillow winks at the myriad layers of theleaves of a tree. Then she woke up. It was still beingfabricated. William Bankes was praising the Waver-ley novels.

He read one of them every six months, he said.And why should that make Charles Tansley angry?He rushed in (all, thought Mrs. Ramsay, becausePrue will not be nice to him) and denounced theWaverley novels when he knew nothing about it, no-thing about it whatsoever, Mrs. Ramsay thought,observing him rather than listening to what he said.She could see how it was from his manner — he125
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