TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

lies. He stamped his foot on the stone step.
" Damn you/' he said. But what had she said?
Simply that it might be fine to-morrow. So it
might.

Not with the barometer falling and the wind
due west.

To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of
consideration for other people's feelings, to rend
the thin veils of civilisation so wantonly, so
brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of
human decency that, without replying, dazed
and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the
pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water,
bespatter her unrebuked. There was nothing
to be said.

He stood by her in silence. Very humbly, at
length, he said that he would step over and ask
the Coastguards if she liked.

There was nobody whom she reverenced as
she reverenced him.

She was quite ready to take his word for it,
she said. Only then they need not cut sandwiches
—that was all, They came to her, naturally,
since she was a woman, all day long with this and
that; one wanting this, another that; the children
were growing up; she often felt she was nothing
but a sponge sopped full of human emotions.
Then he said, Damn you. He said. It must rain.
54