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184 TO THE LIGHTHOUSEwas now heavier and went slower, as if it had fallenin with some rhythm which was dictated to her (shekept looking at the hedge, at the canvas) by whatshe saw, so that while her hand quivered with life,this rhythm was strong enough to bear her alongwith it on its current. Certainly she was losing con-sciousness of outer things. And as she lost con-sciousness of outer things, and her name and herpersonality and her appearance, and whether MrCarmichael was there or not, her mind kept throwingup from its depths, scenes, and names, and sayings,and memories and ideas, like a fountain spurting overthat glaring, hideously difficult white space, whileshe modelled it with greens and blues.

Charles Tansley used to say that, she remembered,women can’t paint, can’t write. Coming up behindher he had stood close beside her, a thing she hated,as she painted here on this very spot. ‘Shag tobacco,'he said, ‘fivepence an ounce,’ parading his poverty,his principles. (But the war had drawn the stingof her femininity. Poor devils, one thought, poordevils of both sexes, getting into such messes.) Hewas always carrying a book about under his arm—apurple book. He ‘worked.’ He sat, she remem-bered, working in a blaze of sun. At dinner hewould sit right in the middle of the view. And then,she reflected, there was that scene on the beach. Onemust remember that. It was a windy morning.They had all gone to the beach. Mrs Ramsay satand wrote letters by a rock. She wrote and wrote.'Oh,’ she said, looking up at last at something float-ing in the sea, ‘is it a lobster pot? Is it an upturnedboat?' She was so short-sighted that she could not