TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

examination of her canvas. The question being
one of the relations of masses, of lights and
shadows, which, to be honest, he had never con-
sidered before, he would like to have it explained
—what then did she wish to make of it? And he
indicated the scene before them. She looked.
She could not show him what she wished to make
of it, could not see it even herself, without a brush
in her hand. She took up once more her old
painting position with the dim eyes and the absent-
minded manner, subduing all her impressions as
a woman to something much more general; be-
coming once more under the power of that vision
which she had seen clearly once and must now
grope for among hedges and houses and mothers
and children—her picture. It was a question, she
remembered, how to connect this mass on the
right hand with that on the left. She might do it
by bringing the line of the branch across so; or
break the vacancy in the foreground by an object
(James perhaps) so. But the danger was that
by doing that the unity of the whole might
be broken. She stopped; she did not want to
bore him; she took the canvas lightly off the
easel.

But it had been seen; it had been taken from
her. This man had shared with her something
profoundly intimate. And, thanking Mr. Ramsay
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