THE WINDOW

And the whole of the effort of merging and
flowing and creating rested on her. Again she
felt, as a fact without hostility, the sterility
of men, for if she did not do itysT^ta^y would
do it, and so, giving herself the Jit x^ke that
one gives a watch that has ^s\iought ^.e old
familiar pulse began beating, as^cisely in**^,
begins ticking — one, two, three, clean, as if,
three. And so on and so on, she rejjs back
listening to it, sheltering and fostering the^ew),
feeble pulse as one might guard a weak flaris.
with a newspaper. And so then, she con-
cluded, addressing herself by bending silently
in his direction to William Bankes—poor man!
who had no wife and no children, and dined alone
in lodgings except for to-night; and in pity for
him, life being now strong enough to bear her
on again, she began all this business, as a sailor
not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail
and yet hardly wants to be off again and thinks
how, had the ship sunk, he would have whirled
round and round and found rest on the floor of
the sea.

" Did you find your letters? I told them to
put them in the hall for you/' she said to William
Bankes.

Lily Briscoe watched her drifting into that
strange no-man's land where to follow people is