TO   THE   LIGHTHOUSE
seriously a story;   it was the sense of adventure
and escape that she wanted, for she was thinking,
as the boat sailed on, how her father's anger about
the points of the compass, James's obstinacy about
the compact, and her own anguish, all had slipped,
all had passed, all had streamed away.   What then
came next?   Where were they going?   From her
hand, ice cold, held deep in the sea, there spurted
up a fountain of joy at the change, at the escape,
at the adventure (that she should be alive, that she
should be there).   And the drops falling from this
sudden and unthinking fountain of joy fell here
and there on the dark, the slumbrous shapes in
her mind;   shapes of a world not realised but
turning in their darkness, catching here and there,
a spark of light; Greece, Rome, Constantinople.
Small as it was, and shaped something like a leaf
stood  on  end  with the  gold  sprinkled waters
flowing in and about it, it had, she supposed, a
place in the universe—even  that little island?
The old gentlemen   in  the  study she thought
could have told her.    Sometimes she strayed in
from the garden purposely to catch them at it.
There they were (it might be Mr. Carmichael or
Mr. Bankes, very old, very stiff) sitting opposite
each other in their low arm-chairs.   They were
crackling in  front of them  the pages of The
Times, when she came in from the garden, all in
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