THE   LIGHTHOUSE
her now when she thought of her picture. Phrases
came. Visions came. Beautiful pictures. Beautiful
phrases. But what she wished to get hold of was
that very jar on the nerves, the thing itself before
it has been made anything. Get that and start
afresh; get that and start afresh; she said
desperately, pitching herself firmly again before
her easel. It was a miserable machine, an in-
efficient machine, she thought, the human appar-
atus for painting or for feeling; it always broke
down at the critical moment; heroically, one must
force it on. She stared, frowning. There was the
hedge, sure enough. But one got nothing by
soliciting urgently. One got only a glare in the
eye from looking at the line of the wall, or from
thinking—she wore a grey hat. She was aston-
ishingly beautiful. Let it come, she thought, if
it will come. For there are moments when one
can neither think nor feel. And if one can neither
think nor feel, she thought, where is one?
Here on the grass, on the ground, she thought,
sitting down, and examining with her brush a
little colony of plantains. For the lawn was very
rough. Here sitting on the world, she thought,
for she could not shake herself free from the sense
that everything this morning was happening for
the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a
traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows,
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