And this, Lily thought, taking the green paint onher brush, this making up scenes about them, is whatwe call ‘knowing' people, ‘thinking' of them, ‘beingfond' of them! Not a word of it was true; she hadmade it up; but it was what she knew them by allthe same. She went on tunnelling her way into herpicture, into the past.
Another time, Paul said he ‘played chess in coffee-houses.’ She had built up a whole structure ofimagination on that saying too. She rememberedhow, as he said it, she thought how he rang up theservant, and she said ‘Mrs Rayley’s out, sir,' and hedecided that he would not come home either. Shesaw him sitting in the corner of some lugubriousplace where the smoke attached itself to the redplush seats, and the waitresses got to know you,playing chess with a little man who was in the teatrade and lived at Surbiton, but that was all Paulknew about him. And then Minta was out when he