TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

mutilated body (it was alive still) was thrown back
into the sea*]

" Mrs, Ramsay!" Lily cried, " Mrs. Ramsay!"
But nothing happened. The pain increased.
That anguish could reduce one to such a pitch of
imbecility, she thought! Anyhow the old man
had not heard her. He remained benignant,
calm—if one chose to think it, sublime. Heaven
be praised, no one had heard her cry that igno-
minious cry, stop pain, stop! She had not
obviously taken leave of her senses. No one had
seen her step off her strip of board into the waters
of annihilation. She remained a skimpy old maid,
holding a paint-brush on the lawn.

And now slowly the pain of the want, and the
bitter anger (to be called back, just as she thought
she would never feel sorrow for Mrs. Ramsay
again. Had she missed her among the coffee
cups at breakfast? not in the least) lessened; and
of their anguish left, as antidote, a relief that was
balm in itself, and also, but more mysteriously,
a sense of some one there, of Mrs. Ramsay, re-
lieved for a moment of the weight that the world
had put on her, staying lightly by her side and
then (for this was Mrs, Ramsay in all her beauty)
raising to her forehead a wreath of white flowers
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