THE LIGHTHOUSE

rest in the extreme obscurity of human relation-
ships. Who knows what we are, what we feel?
Who knows even at the moment of intimacy, This
is knowledge? Aren't things spoilt then, Mrs.
Ramsay may have asked (it seemed to have
happened so often, this silence by her side) by
saying them? Aren't we more expressive thus?
The moment at least seemed extraordinarily
fertile. She rammed a little hole in the sand and
covered it up, by way of burying in it the per-
fection of the moment. It was like a drop of
silver in which one dipped and illumined the
darkness of the past,

Lily stepped back to get her canvas — so
—into perspective. It was an odd road to be
walking, this of painting. Out and out one went,
further and further, until at last one seemed to be
on a narrow plank, perfectly alone, over the sea.
And as she dipped into the blue paint, she dipped
too into the past there. Now Mrs. Ramsay got
up, she remembered. It was time to go back to
the house—time for luncheon. And they all
walked up from the beach together, she walking
behind with William Bankes, and there was
Minta in front of them with a hole in her stocking.
How that little round hole of pink heel seemed to
flaunt itself before them! How William Bankes
deplored it, without, so far as she could remember,

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