THE LIGHTHOUSE

loose after the first year or so; the marriage had
turned out rather badly.

And this, Lily thought, taking the green paint

on her brush, this making up scenes about them,

is what we call " knowing " people, " thinking "

of them, " being fond " of them! Not a word of

it was true; she had made it up; but it was what

she knew them by all the same. She went on

tunnelling her way into her picture, into the past.

Another time, Paul said he " played chess in

coffee-houses". She had built up a whole

structure of imagination on that saying too. She

remembered how, as he said it, she thought how

he rang up the servant, and she said " Mrs.

Rayley's out, sir ", and he decided that he would

not come home either. She saw him sitting in

the corner of some lugubrious place where the

smoke attached itself to the red plush seats, and

the waitresses got to know you, playing chess

with a little man who was in the tea trade and

lived at Surbiton, but that was all Paul knew about

him. And then Minta was out when he came

home and then there was that scene on the stairs,

when he got the poker in case of burglars (no

doubt to frighten her too) and spoke so bitterly,

saying she had ruined his life. At any rate when

she went down to see them at a cottage near

Rickmansworth, things were horribly strained

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