THE WINDOW

effort? She must make it once more. There's the
sprig on the table-cloth; there's my painting; I
must move the tree to the middle; that matters—
nothing else. Could she not hold fast to that, she
asked herself, and not lose her temper, and not
argue; and if she wanted a little revenge take it
by laughing at him?

" Oh, Mr. Tansley," she said, " do take me to
the Lighthouse with you. I should so love it."

She was telling lies he could see. She was
saying what she did not mean to annoy him, for
some reason. She was laughing at him. He was
in his old flannel trousers. He had no others. He
felt very rough and isolated and lonely. He knew
that she was trying to tease him for some reason;
she didn't want to go to the Lighthouse with him;
she despised him: so did Prue Ramsay; so did
they all. But he was not going to be made a fool
of by women, so he turned deliberately in his
chair and looked out of the window and said, all
in a jerk, very rudely, it would be too rough for
her to-morrow. She would be sick.

It annoyed him that she should have made him
speak like that, with Mrs. Ramsay listening. If
only he could be alone in his room working, he
thought, among his books. That was where he
felt at his ease. And he had never run a penny
into debt; he had never cost his father a penny