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THE WINDOWcontain the words that express the speaker’s thoughts;nevertheless speaking French imposes some order,some uniformity. Replying to her in the same lan-guage, Mr. Bankes said, ‘No, not at all,’ and Mr.Tansley, who had no knowledge of this language, evenspoken thus in words of one syllable, at once suspectedits insincerity. They did talk nonsense, he thought,the Ramsays; and he pounced on this fresh instancewith joy, making a note which, one of these days, hewould read aloud, to one or two friends. There, in asociety where one could say what one liked he wouldsarcastically describe ‘staying with the Ramsays’ andwhat nonsense they talked. It was worth while doingit once, he would say; but not again. The womenbored one so, he would say. Of course Ramsay haddished himself by marrying a beautiful woman andhaving eight children. It would shape itself somethinglike that, but now, at this moment, sitting stuck therewith an empty seat beside him nothing had shapeditself at all. It was all in scraps and fragments. Hefelt extremely, even physically, uncomfortable. Hewanted somebody to give him a chance of assertinghimself. He wanted it so urgently that he fidgeted inhis chair, looked at this person, then at that person,tried to break into their talk, opened his mouth andshut it again. They were talking about the fishingindustry. Why did no one ask him his opinion? Whatdid they know about the fishing industry?

Lily Briscoe knew all that. Sitting opposite him couldshe not see, as in an X-ray photograph, the ribs andthigh bones of the young man’s desire to impress him-self lying dark in the mist of his flesh — that thin mistwhich convention had laid over his burning desire to107