20 TO THE LIGHTHOUSEas he kept like that, waving, shouting, she was safe;he would not stand still and look at her picture.And that was what Lily Briscoe could not have en-dured. Even while she looked at the mass, at theline, at the colour, at Mrs Ramsay sitting in thewindow with James, she kept a feeler on her sur-roundings lest someone should creep up, and sud-denly she should find her picture looked at. Butnow, with all her senses quickened as they were,looking, straining, till the colour of the wall and thejacmanna beyond burnt into her eyes, she was awareof someone coming out of the house, coming towardsher; but somehow divined, from the footfall, WilliamBankes, so that though her brush quivered, she didnot, as she would have done had it been Mr Tansley,Paul Rayley, Minta Doyle, or practically anybodyelse, turn her canvas upon the grass, but let it stand.William Bankes stood beside her.
They had rooms in the village, and so, walking in,walking out, parting late on door-mats, had said littlethings about the soup, about the children, about onething and another which made them allies; so thatwhen he stood beside her now in his judicial way(he was old enough to be her father too, a botanist, awidower, smelling of soap, very scrupulous andclean) she just stood there. He just stood there.Her shoes were excellent, he observed. Theyallowed the toes their natural expansion. Lodgingin the same house with her, he had noticed too, howorderly she was, up before breakfast and off to paint,he believed, alone: poor, presumably, and withoutthe complexion or the allurement of Miss Doyle cer-tainly, but with a good sense which made her in his