TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

him divest himself of all those glories of isolation
and austerity which crowned him in youth to
cumber himself definitely with fluttering wings
and clucking domesticities. They gave him some-
thing—William Bankes acknowledged that; it
would have been pleasant if Cam had stuck a
flower in his coat or clambered over his shoulder,
as over her father's, to look at a picture of
Vesuvius in eruption; but they hud also, his old
friends could not but feel, destroyed something.
What would a stranger think now? What did this
Lily Briscoe think? Could one help noticing that
habits grew on him? eccentricities, weaknesses
perhaps? It was astonishing that a man of his
intellect could stoop so low as he did—hut that
was too harsh a phrase—could depend so much
as he did upon people's praise*

" Oh but," said Lily, " think of his work! "
Whenever she " thought of his work " she
always saw clearly before her a targe kitchen
table. It was Andrew's doing. She asked him
what his father's books were about* " Subject and
object and the nature of reality % Andrew had said.
And when she said Heavens, she had no notion
what that meant. " Think of a kitchen table then",
he told her, " when you're not there"*

So she always saw, when she thought of Mr,
Ramsay's work, a scrubbed kitchen table. It
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