THE WINDOW 107scowled ahead of him. He could almost pity thesemild cultivated people, who would be blown sky high,like bales of wool and barrels of apples, one of thesedays by the gunpowder that was in him.

'Will you take me, Mr Tansley?’ said Lily, quickly,kindly, for, of course, if Mrs Ramsay said to her, as ineffect she did, ‘I am drowning, my dear, in seas offire. Unless you apply some balm to the anguish ofthis hour and say something nice to that young manthere, life will run upon the rocks—indeed I hear thegrating and the growling at this minute. My nervesare taut as fiddle strings. Another touch and theywill snap'—when Mrs Ramsay said all this, as theglance in her eyes said it, of course for the hundredand fiftieth time Lily Briscoe had to renounce theexperiment—what happens if one is not nice to thatyoung man there—and be nice.

Judging the turn in her mood correctly—that shewas friendly to him now—he was relieved of hisegotism, and told her how he had been thrown out ofa boat when he was a baby; how his father used tofish him out with a boat-hook; that was how he hadlearnt to swim. One of his uncles kept the light onsome rock or other off the Scottish coast, he said. Hehad been there with him in a storm. This was saidloudly in a pause. They had to listen to him whenhe said that he had been with his uncle in a lighthousein a storm. Ah, thought Lily Briscoe, as the con-versation took this auspicious turn, and she felt MrsRamsay's gratitude (for Mrs Ramsay was free nowto talk for a moment herself), ah, she thought, but

what haven't I paid to get it for you? She had not

been sincere.

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