THE WINDOW

his life. But in that one sentence lay compact,
like gunpowder, that his grandfather was a
fisherman; his father a chemist; that he had
worked his way up entirely himself; that he was
proud of it; that he was Charles Tansley—a fact
that nobody there seemed to realise; but one of
these days every single person would know it.
He scowled ahead of him. He could almost pity
these mild cultivated people, who would be blown
sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of apples,
one of these days by the gunpowder that was in
him.

" Will you take me, Mr. Tansley? " said Lily,
quickly, kindly, for, of course, if Mrs. Ramsay said
to her, as in effect she did, " I am drowning, my
dear, in seas of fire. Unless you- apply some balm
to the anguish of this hour and say something nice
to that young man there, life will run upon the
rocks—indeed I hear the grating and the growling
at this minute. My nerves are taut as fiddle
strings. Another touch and they will snap "—
when Mrs. Ramsay said all this, as the glance in
her eyes said it, of course for the hundred and
fiftieth time Lily Briscoe had to renounce the
experiment—what happens if one is not nice to
that young man there—and be nice.

Judging the turn in her mood correctly—that
she was friendly to him now—he was relieved of