TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

his egotism, and told her how he had been thrown
out of a boat when he was a baby; how his father
used to fish him out with a boat-hook; that was
how he had learnt to swim. One of his uncles
kept the light on some rock or other off the
Scottish coast, he said. He had been there with
him in a storm. This was said loudly in a pause.
They had to listen to him when he said that he
had been with his uncle in a lighthouse in a
storm. Ah, thought Lily Briscoe, as the con-
versation took this auspicious turn, and she felt
Mrs. Ramsay's gratitude (for Mrs. Ramsay was
free now to talk for a moment herself), ah, she
thought, but what haven't I paid to get it for you?
She had not been sincere.

She had done the usual trick—been nice. She
would never know him. He would never know
her. Human relations were all like that, she
thought, and the worst (if it had not been for Mr.
Bankes) were between men and women. In-
evitably these were extremely insincere. Then
her eye caught the salt cellar, which she had
placed there to remind her, and she remembered
that next morning she would move the tree further
towards the middle, and her spirits rose so high
at the thought of painting to-morrow that she
laughed out loud at what Mr, Tansley was saying,
Let him talk all night if he liked it.

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