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THE WINDOW 37

To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of con-sideration for other people’s feelings, to rend the thinveils of civilization so wantonly, so brutally, was toher so horrible an outrage of human decency that,without replying, dazed and blinded, she bent herhead as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench ofdirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There wasnothing to be said.

He stood by her in silence. Very humbly, atlength, he said that he would step over and ask theCoastguards if she liked.

There was nobody whom she reverenced as shereverenced him.

She was quite ready to take his word for it, shesaid. Only then they need not cut sandwiches—that was all. They came to her, naturally, since shewas a woman, all day long with this and that; onewanting this, another that; the children were growingup; she often felt she was nothing but a spongesopped full of human emotions. Then he said, Damnyou. He said, It must rain. He said, It won’t rain;and instantly a Heaven of security opened beforeher. There was nobody she reverenced more. Shewas not good enough to tie his shoe strings, she felt.

Already ashamed of that petulance, of that ges-ticulation of the hands when charging at the head ofhis troops, Mr Ramsay rather sheepishly prodded hisson's bare legs once more, and then, as if he had herleave for it, with a movement which oddly remindedhis wife of the great sea lion at the Zoo tumblingbackwards after swallowing his fish and wallopingoff so that the water in the tank washes from side toside, he dived into the evening air which, already