THE WINDOWshow him what she wished to make of it, could notsee it even herself, without a brush in her hand. Shetook up once more her old painting position withthe dim eyes and the absent-minded manner, subduingall her impressions as a woman to something muchmore general; becoming once more under the powerof that vision which she had seen clearly once andmust now grope for among hedges and houses andmothers and children — her picture. It was a ques-tion, she remembered, how to connect this mass onthe right hand with that on the left. She might doit by bringing the line of the branch across so; orbreak the vacancy in the foreground by an object(James perhaps) so. But the danger was that by doingthat the 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 Mrs.Ramsay 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 gallerynot alone any more but arm in arm with somebody
— the strangest feeling in the world, and the mostexhilarating — she nicked the catch of her paint-boxto, more firmly than was necessary, and the nickseemed to surround in a circle for ever the paint-box, the lawn, Mr. Bankes, and that wild villain,Cam, dashing past.5 — L.65