THE WINDOW How could she be such a goose, he asked, as to scramble about the rocks in jewels? She was by way of being terrified of him—he was so fearfully clever, and the first night when she had sat by him, and he talked about George Eliot, she had been really frightened, for she had left the third volume of Middlemarch in the train and she never knew what happened in the end; but afterwards she got on perfectly, and made herself out even more ignorant than she was, because he liked telling her she was a fool. And so to-night, directly he laughed at her, she was not frightened. Besides, she knew, directly she came into the room, that the miracle had happened; she wore her golden haze. Sometijnes she had it; sometimes not. She never knew why it came or why it went, or if she had it until she came into the room and then she knew instantly by the way some man looked at her. Yes, to-night she had it, tremendously; she knew that by the way Mr. Ramsay told her not to be a fool. She sat beside him, smiling. It must have happened then, thought Mrs. Ramsay; they are engaged. And for a moment she felt what she had never expected to feel again —-jealousy. For he, her husband, felt it too— Minta's glow; he liked these girls, these golden- reddish girls, with something flying, something a 153