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TO THE LIGHTHOUSEto himself he strolled off to his study. Mrs. Ramsay,bringing Prue back into the alliance of family lifeagain, from which she had escaped, throwing catches,asked,

‘Did Nancy go with them?'14

[Certainly, Nancy had gone with them, since MintaDoyle had asked it with her dumb look, holding outher hand, as Nancy made off, after lunch, to her attic,to escape the horror of family life. She supposed shemust go then. She did not want to go. She did notwant to be drawn into it all. For as they walked alongthe road to the cliff Minta kept on taking her hand.Then she would let it go. Then she would take it again.What was it she wanted? Nancy asked herself. Therewas something, of course, that people wanted; forwhen Minta took her hand and held it, Nancy, reluct-antly, saw the whole world spread out beneath her,as if it were Constantinople seen through a mist, andthen, however heavy-eyed one might be, one mustneeds ask, ‘Is that Santa Sofia?’ ‘Is that the GoldenHorn?’ So Nancy asked, when Minta took her hand,‘What is it that she wants? Is it that?’ And what wasthat? Here and there emerged from the mist (as Nancylooked down upon life spread beneath her) a pin-nacle, a dome; prominent things, without names. Butwhen Minta dropped her hand, as she did when theyran down the hillside, all that, the dome, the pinnacle,whatever it was that had protruded through the mist,sank down into it and disappeared.

Minta, Andrew observed, was rather a good walker.88