TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

to her)—after all, she had not generally any
difficulty in making people like her; for instance,
George Manning; Mr. Wallace; famous as they
were, they would come to her of an evening,
quietly, and talk alone over her fire. She bore
about with her, she could not help knowing it,
the torch of her beauty; she carried it erect into
any room that she entered; and after all, veil it as
she might, and shrink from the monotony of
bearing that it imposed on her, her beauty was
apparent. She had been admired. She had been
loved. She had entered rooms where mourners
sat. Tears had flown in her presence. Men, and
women too, letting go the multiplicity of things,
had allowed themselves with her the relief of
simplicity. It injured her that he should shrink.
It hurt her. And yet not cleanly, not rightly.
That was what she minded, coming as it did on
top of her discontent with her husband; the sense
she had now when Mr. Carmichael shuffled
past, just nodding to her question, with a book
beneath his arm, in his yellow slippers, that she
was suspected; and that all this desire of hers to
give, to help, was vanity. For her own self-
satisfaction was it that she wished so instinctively
to help, to give, that people might say of her,
" O Mrs. Ramsay! dear Mrs. Ramsay . . , Mrs.
Ramsay, of course! " and need her and send for
68