TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

little space of sky which sleeps beside the
moon.

Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Was it,

once more, the deceptiveness of beauty, so that

all one's perceptions, half-way to truth, were

tangled in a golden mesh? or did she lock up

within her some secret which certainly Lily

Briscoe believed people must have for the world

to go on at all? Every one could not be as helter

skelter, hand to mouth as she was. But if they

knew, could they tell one what they knew?

Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs.

Ramsay's knees, close as she could get, smiling

to think that Mrs. Ramsay would never know the

reason of that pressure, she imagined how in the

chambers of the mind and heart of the woman

who was, physically, touching her, were stood,

like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets

bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell

them out would teach one everything, but they

would never be offered openly, never made public.

What art was there, known to love or cunning,

by which one pressed through into those secret

chambers? What device for becoming, like waters

poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one

with the object one adored? Could the body

achieve it, or the mind, subtly mingling in the

intricate passages of the brain? or the heart?

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