TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

She paused a moment. But now, she said,
artists had come here. There indeed, only a few
paces off, stood one of them, in Panama hat and
yellow boots, seriously, softly, absorbedly, for all
that he was watched by ten little boys, with an air
of profound contentment on his round red face,
gazing, and then, when he had gazed, dipping;
imbuing the tip of his brush in some soft mound
of green or pink. Since Mr. Paunceforte had been
there, three years before, all the pictures were like
that she said, green and grey, with lemon-coloured
sailing-boats, and pink women on the beach,

But her grandmother's friends, she said,
glancing discreetly as they passed, took the
greatest pains; first they mixed their own colours,
and then they ground them, and then they put
damp cloths on them to keep them moist.

So Mr. Tansley supposed she meant him to see
that that man's picture was skimpy, was that what
one said? The colours weren't solid? Was that
what one said? Under the influence of that ex-
traordinary emotion which had been growing ail
the walk, had begun in the garden when he had
wanted to take her bag, had increased in the town
when he had wanted to tell her everything about
himself, he was coming to see himself and every-
thing he had ever known gone crooked a little.
It was awfully strange.
26