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22 TO THE LIGHTHOUSEremnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousandforces did their best to pluck from her. And it wasthen too, in that chill and windy way, as she beganto paint, that there forced themselves upon her otherthings, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keep-ing house for her father off the Brompton Road, andhad much ado to control her impulse to fling herself(thank Heaven she had always resisted so far) atMrs Ramsay’s knee and say to her—but what couldone say to her? ‘I’m in love with you?’ No, thatwas not true. ‘I’m in love with this all,’ wavingher hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children?It was absurd, it was impossible. One could not saywhat one meant. So now she laid her brushes neatlyin the box, side by side, and said to William Bankes:

‘It suddenly gets cold. The sun seems to giveless heat,’ she said, looking about her, for it wasbright enough, the grass still a soft deep green, thehouse starred in its greenery with purple passionflowers, and rooks dropping cool cries from the highblue. But something moved, flashed, turned a silverwing in the air. It was September after all, themiddle of September, and past six in the evening. Sooff they strolled down the garden in the usual direction,past the tennis lawn, past the pampas grass, to thatbreak in the thick hedge, guarded by red-hot pokerslike braziers of clear burning coal, between which theblue waters of the bay looked bluer than ever.

They came there regularly every evening drawnby some need. It was as if the water floated off andset sailing thoughts which had grown stagnant on dryland, and gave to their bodies even some sort ofphysical relief. First, the pulse of colour flooded