TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

felt this thing that she called life terrible,
hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave
it a chance. There were the eternal problems:
suffering; death; the poor. There was always
a woman dying of cancer even here. And yet
she had said to all these children, You shall go
through with it. To eight people she had said
relentlessly that (and the bill for the greenhouse
would be fifty pounds). For that reason, knowing
what was before them—love and ambition and
being wretched alone in dreary places—she had
often the feeling, Why must they grow up and
lose it all? And then she said to herself, brandish-
ing her sword at life, nonsense. They will be
perfectly happy. And here she was, she re-
flected, feeling life rather sinister again, making'"
Minta marry Paul Rayley; because whatever
she might feel about her own transaction and
she had had experiences which need not happen
to everyone (she did not name them to her-
self); she was driven on, too quickly she knew,
almost as if it were an escape for her too, to
say that people must marry; people must have
children.

Was she wrong in this, she asked herself, re-
viewing her conduct for the past week or two, and
wondering if she had indeed put any pressure
upon Minta, who was only twenty-four, to make
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