TO THE LIGHTHOUSEcarrying a book about under his arm — a purple book.He ‘worked’. He sat, she remembered, working in ablaze of sun. At dinner he would sit right in the middleof the view. And then, she reflected, there was thatscene on the beach. One must remember that. It wasa windy morning. They had all gone to the beach.Mrs. Ramsay sat and wrote letters by a rock. Shewrote and wrote. ‘Oh,’ she said, looking up at last atsomething floating in the sea, ‘is it a lobster pot? Is itan upturned boat?’ She was so short-sighted that shecould not see, and then Charles Tansley became asnice as he could possibly be. He began playing ducksand drakes. They chose little flat black stones and sentthem skipping over the waves. Every now and thenMrs. Ramsay looked up over her spectacles andlaughed at them. What they said she could not remem-ber, but only she and Charles throwing stones and get-ing on very well all of a sudden and Mrs. Ramsaywatching them. She was highly conscious of that. Mrs.Ramsay, she thought, stepping back and screwing upher eyes. (It must have altered the design a good dealwhen she was sitting on the step with James. Theremust have been a shadow.) Mrs. Ramsay. When shethought of herself and Charles throwing ducks anddrakes and of the whole scene on the beach, it seemedto depend somehow upon Mrs. Ramsay sitting underthe rock, with a pad on her knee, writing letters. (Shewrote innumerable letters, and sometimes the wind tookthem and she and Charles just saved a page from thesea.) But what a power was in the human soul! she

thought. That woman sitting there, writing under the

rock resolved everything into simplicity; made these

angers, irritations fall off like old rags; she brought

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