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THE LIGHTHOUSEfalgar Square grasping a big stick? Had heturned pages over and over, without reading them,sitting in his room in St. John's Wood alone?She did not know what he had done, when heheard that Andrew was killed, but she felt it inhim all the same. They only mumbled at eachother on staircases; they looked up at the skyand said it will be fine or it won't be fine. Butthis was one way of knowing people, she thought:to know the outline, not the detail, to sit in one'sgarden and look at the slopes of a hill runningpurple down into the distant heather. She knewhim in that way. She knew that he had changedsomehow. She had never read a line of his poetry.She thought[∧]thatshe knew how it went though, slowlyand sonorously. It was seasoned and mellow. Itwas about the desert and the camel. It was aboutthe palm tree and the sunset. It was extremelyimpersonal; it said something about death; it saidvery little about love. There was an imperson-ality about him. He wanted very little of otherpeople. Had he not always lurched ratherawkwardly past the drawing-room window withsome newspaper under his arm, trying to avoidMrs. Ramsay whom for some reason he did notmuch like? On that account, of course, she wouldalways try to make him stop. He would bow toher. He would halt unwillingly and bow pro-301
