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TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

‘What does it mean? How do you explain it all?’she wanted to say, turning to Mr. Carmichael again.For the whole world seemed to have dissolved in thisearly morning hour into a pool of thought, a deepbasin of reality, and one could almost fancy that hadMr. Carmichael spoken, a little tear would have rentthe surface of the pool. And then? Something wouldemerge. A hand would be shoved up, a blade wouldbe flashed. It was nonsense of course.

A curious notion came to her that he did after allhear the things she could not say. He was an inscrut-able old man, with the yellow stain on his beard, andhis poetry, and his puzzles, sailing serenely througha world which satisfied all his wants, so that shethought he had only to put down his hand wherehe lay on the lawn to fish up anything he wanted.She looked at her picture. That would have been hisanswer, presumably — how ‘you’ and ‘I’ and ‘she’pass and vanish; nothing stays; all changes; but notwords, not paint. Yet it would be hung in the attics,she thought; it would be rolled up and flung undera sofa; yet even so, even of a picture like that, it wastrue. One might say, even of this scrawl, not of thatactual picture, perhaps, but of what it attempted,that it ‘remained for ever’, she was going to say, or,for the words spoken sounded even to herself, tooboastful, to hint, wordlessly; when, looking at thepicture, she was surprised to find that she could notsee it. Her eyes were full of a hot liquid (she did notthink of tears at first) which, without disturbing thefirmness of her lips, made the air thick, rolled downher cheeks. She had perfect control of herself — Ohyes! — in every other way. Was she crying then for208