THE WINDOW 135Charles Tansley, with her husband, and with herself,for she had raised his hopes. Then feeling for hershawl and remembering that she had wrapped itround the boar’s skull, she got up, and pulled thewindow down another inch or two, and heard thewind, and got a breath of the perfectly indifferentchill night air and murmured good-night to Mildredand left the room and let the tongue of the doorslowly lengthen in the lock and went out.

She hoped he would not bang his books on thefloor above their heads, she thought, still thinkinghow annoying Charles Tansley was. For neither of

them slept well; they were excitable children, andsince he said things like that about the Lighthouse,it seemed to her likely that he would knock a pileof books over, just as they were going to sleep,clumsily sweeping them off the table with his elbow.For she supposed that he had gone upstairs to work.Yet he looked so desolate; yet she would feel relievedwhen he went; yet she would see that he was bettertreated to-morrow; yet he was admirable with herhusband; yet his manners certainly wanted im-proving; yet she liked his laugh—thinking this, asshe came downstairs, she noticed that she could nowsee the moon itself through the staircase window—the yellow harvest moon—and turned, and they sawher, standing above them on the stairs.

'That ’s my mother,’ thought Prue. Yes; Mintashould look at her; Paul Rayley should look at her.

That is the thing itself, she felt, as if there were onlyone person like that in the world; her mother. And,from having been quite grown up, a moment before,talking with the others, she became a child again,
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