THE LIGHTHOUSEwere all those paths, those terraces, those bedrooms —all those innumerable things. But as, just before sleep,things simplify themselves so that only one of all themyriad details has power to assert itself, so, she felt,looking drowsily at the island, all those paths andterraces and bedrooms were fading and disappearing,and nothing was left but a pale blue censer swingingrhythmically this way and that across her mind. Itwas a hanging garden; it was a valley, full of birds,and flowers, and antelopes. . . She was falling asleep.‘Come now,’ said Mr. Ramsay, suddenly shuttinghis book.
Come where? To what extraordinary adventure?She woke with a start. To land somewhere, to climbsomewhere? Where was he leading them? For afterhis immense silence the words startled them. But itwas absurd. He was hungry, he said. It was time forlunch. Besides, look, he said. There’s the Lighthouse.‘We’re almost there.’
‘He’s doing very well,’ said Macalister, praisingJames. ‘He’s keeping her very steady.'But his father never praised him, James thoughtgrimly.Mr. Ramsay opened the parcel and shared out thesandwiches among them. Now he was happy, eatingbread and cheese with these fishermen. He wouldhave liked to live in a cottage and lounge about inthe harbour spitting with the other old men, Jamesthought, watching him slice his cheese into thin yellow sheets with his penknife.
This is right, this is it, Cam kept feeling, as shepeeled her hard-boiled egg. Now she felt as she didin the study when the old men were reading The237
