TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

his glass at lunch a few drops of something, which
accounted, the children thought, for the vivid
streak of canary-yellow in moustache and beard
that were otherwise milk-white. He wan toil
nothing, he murmured.

He should have been a great philosopher, said
Mrs. Ramsay, as they went down the road to the
fishing village, but he had made an unfortunate
marriage. Holding her black parasol very erect,
and moving with an indescribable air of expecta-
tion, as if she were going to meet someone round
the corner, she told the story; an affair at Oxford
with some girl; an early marriage; poverty;
going to India; translating a little poetry " very
beautifully, I believe", being willing to teach the
boys Persian or Hindustanee, but what really was
the use of that?—and then lying, as they saw him,
on the lawn.

It flattered him; snubbed as he had been,
it soothed him that Mrs* Ramsay should tell
him this. Charles Tansley revived. Insinuat-
ing, too, as she did the greatness of man's in-
tellect, even in its decay, the subjection of all
wives—not that she blamed the girl, and the
marriage had been happy enough, she believed—
to their husband's labours, she made him feel
better pleased with himself than he had done yet,
and he would have liked, had they taken a cab,

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