62 TO THE LIGHTHOUSE—he turned, with his glasses raised to the scientificexamination of her canvas. The question being oneof the relations of masses, of lights and shadows,which, to be honest, he had never considered before,he would like to have it explained—what then didshe wish to make of it? And he indicated the scenebefore them. She looked. She could not show himwhat she wished to make of it, could not see it evenherself, without a brush in her hand. She took uponce more her old painting position with the dim eyesand the absent-minded manner, subduing all herimpressions as a woman to something much moregeneral; becoming once more under the power of thatvision which she had seen clearly once and must nowgrope for among hedges and houses and mothers andchildren—her picture. It was a question, she re-membered, how to connect this mass on the righthand with that on the left. She might do it bybringing the line of the branch across so; or breakthe vacancy in the foreground by an object (Jamesperhaps) so. But the danger was that by doing thatthe unity of the whole might be broken. Shestopped; she did not want to bore him; she took thecanvas lightly off the easel.
But it had been seen; it had been taken from her.This man had shared with her something profoundlyintimate. And, thanking Mr Ramsay for it and MrsRamsay for it and the hour and the place, creditingthe world with a power which she had not suspected,that one could walk away down that long gallery notalone any more but arm in arm with somebody—the strangest feeling in the world, and the most ex-hilarating—she nicked the catch of her paint-box to,