TO THE LIGHTHOUSEfelt this thing that she called life terrible,hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gaveit a chance. There were the eternal problems:suffering; death; the poor. There was alwaysa woman dying of cancer even here. And yetshe had said to all these children, You shall gothrough with it. To eight people she had saidrelentlessly that (and the bill for the greenhousewould be fifty pounds). For that reason, knowingwhat was before them—love and ambition andbeing wretched alone in dreary places—she hadoften the feeling, Why must they grow up andlose it all? And then she said to herself, brandish-ing her sword at life, nonsense. They will beperfectly happy. And here she was, she re-flected, feeling life rather sinister again, makingMinta marry Paul Rayley; because whatevershe might feel about her own transaction andshe had had experiences which need not happento everyone (she did not name them to her-self); she was driven on, too quickly she knew,almost as if it were an escape for her too, tosay that people must marry; people must havechildren.
Was she wrong in this, she asked herself, re-viewing her conduct for the past week or two, andwondering if she had indeed put any pressureupon Minta, who was only twenty-four, to make
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