THE LIGHTHOUSEness there? (She was looking at the drawing-roomsteps; they looked extraordinarily empty). It wasone’s body feeling, not one’s mind. The physicalsensations that went with the bare look of thesteps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant.To want and not to have, sent all up her body ahardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then towant and not to have—to want and want—howthat wrung the heart, and wrung it again andagain! Oh Mrs. Ramsay! she called out silently,to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract ,one made of her, that woman in grey as if tooutsetgal69abuse her for having gone, and then having gone,HB: Black pencil lasso.come back again. It had seemed so safe, thinkingof her. Ghost, air, nothingness, a thing you couldplay with easily and safely at any time of day ornight, she had been that, and then suddenly sheput her hand out and wrung the heart thus.Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, thefrill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on theterrace, the whole wave and whisper of the gardenbecame like curves and arabesques flourishinground a centre of complete emptiness.“What is deathdoes itmean? How do you explain it all?"she wanted to say, turning to Mr. Carmichaelagain. For the whole world seemed to have dis-solved in this early morning hour into a pool ofthought, a deep basin of intense[%]reality, and one275