THE LIGHTHOUSE 209shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs Ramsaywould return. 'Mrs Ramsay!' she said aloud, 'MrsRamsay!' The tears ran down her face.7Ramsay!’ The tears ran down her face.square out of its side to bait his hook with. Themutilated body (it was alive still) was thrown backinto the sea.]8‘Mrs Ramsay!’ Lily cried, 'Mrs Ramsay!' Butnothing happened. The pain increased. That an-guish could reduce one to such a pitch of imbecility,she thought! Anyhow the old man had not heardher. He remained benignant, calm—if one choseto think it, sublime. Heaven be praised, no one hadheard her cry that ignominious cry, stop pain, stop!She had not obviously taken leave of her senses. Noone had seen her step off her strip of board into thewaters of annihilation. She remained a skimpy oldmaid, holding a paint-brush on the lawn.
And now slowly the pain of the want, and thebitter anger (to be called back, just as she thoughtshe would never feel sorrow for Mrs Ramsay again.Had she missed her among the coffee cups at break-fast? not in the least) lessened; and of their anguishleft, as antidote, a relief that was balm in itself, andalso, but more mysteriously, a sense of someonethere, of Mrs Ramsay, relieved for a moment of theweight that the world had put on her, staying lightlyby her side and then (for this was Mrs Ramsay in allher beauty) raising to her forehead a wreath of white