TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

head. " We shall need a big dish to-night
Where is it—the blue dish? " She alone spoke
the truth; to her alone could he speak it. That
was the source of her everlasting attraction for
him, perhaps; she was a person to whom one
could say what came into one's head. But all the
time he thought of her, he was conscious of
his father following his thought, shadowing it,
making it shiver and falter.

At last he ceased to think; there he sat with
his hand on the tiller in the sun, staring at the
Lighthouse, powerless to move, powerless to flick
off these grains of misery which settled on his
mind one after another. A rope seemed to
bind him there, and his father had knotted it
and he could only escape by taking a knife
and plunging it. ... But at that moment the
sail swung slowly round, filled slowly out, the
boat seemed to shake herself, and then to move
off half conscious in her sleep, and then she
woke and shot through the waves. The relief was
extraordinary. They all seemed to fall away from
each other again and to be at their ease and the
fishing-lines slanted taut across the side of the
boat. But his father did not rouse himself. He
only raised his right hand mysteriously high in
the air, and let it fall upon his knee again as if he
' were conducting some secret symphony.
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