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THE WINDOW 29respect for Mr Ramsay’s mind, until her thoughtwhich had spun quicker and quicker exploded of itsown intensity; she felt released; a shot went off closeat hand, and there came, flying from its fragments,frightened, effusive, tumultuous, a flock of starlings.

‘Jasper!' said Mr Bankes. They turned the way thestarlings flew, over the terrace. Following the scatterof swift-flying birds in the sky they stepped throughthe gap in the high hedge straight into Mr Ramsay, whoboomed tragically at them: ‘Someone had blundered!'

His eyes, glazed with emotion, defiant with tragicintensity, met theirs for a second, and trembled onthe verge of recognition; but then, raising his handhalf-way to his face as if to avert, to brush off, in anagony of peevish shame, their normal gaze, as if hebegged them to withhold for a moment what he knewto be inevitable, as if he impressed upon them hisown child-like resentment of interruption, yet even

in the moment of discovery was not to be routedutterly, but was determined to hold fast to some-thing of this delicious emotion, this impure rhapsodyof which he was ashamed, but in which he revelled—he turned abruptly, slammed his private door onthem; and, Lily Briscoe and Mr Bankes, looking un-easily up into the sky, observed that the flock ofstarlings which Jasper had routed with his gun hadsettled on the tops of the elm trees.5

And even if it isn’t fine to-morrow,’ said MrsRamsay, raising her eyes to glance at William Bankesand Lily Briscoe as they passed, 'it will be another*B 949