TO THE LIGHTHOUSEin the air with excitement. Or he might sit at thehead of the table dead silent from one end ofdinner to the other. Yes, thought James, whilethe boat slapped and dawdled there in the hotsun; there was a waste of snow and rock verylonely and austere; and there he had come tofeel, quite often lately, when his father said some-thing or did something which surprised the others,there were two pairs of footprints only; his ownand his father's. They alone knew each other.What then was this terror, this hatred? Turningback among the many leaves which the past hadfolded in him, peering into the heart of thatforest where light and shade so chequer each otherthat all shape is distorted, and one blunders,flounders[%]now with the sun in one’s eyes now witha dark shadow, looking into the past[%]he sought animage to cool and detach and round off his feelingin a concrete shape. Suppose then that as a childsitting helpless in a perambulator, or on some-one’s knee, he had seen a waggon crush ignorantlyand innocently, someone’s foot? Suppose he hadseen the foot first, in the grass, smooth, and whole;then the wheel; and the same foot, purple,crushed. But the wheel was innocent. So now,when his father came striding down the passageknocking them up early in the morning to go tothe Lighthouse down it came over his foot, over284
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