TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

seriously a story; it was the sense of adventure

and escape that she wanted, for she was thinking,

as the boat sailed on, how her father's anger about

the points of the compass, James's obstinacy about

the compact, and her own anguish, all had slipped,

all had passed, all had streamed away. What then

came next? Where were they going? From her

hand, ice cold, held deep in the sea, there spurted

up a fountain of joy at the change, at the escape,

at the adventure (that she should be alive, that she

should be there). And the drops falling from this

sudden and unthinking fountain of joy fell here

and there on the dark, the slumbrous shapes in

her mind; shapes of a world not realised but

turning in their darkness, catching here and there,

a spark of light; Greece, Rome, Constantinople.

Small as it was, and shaped something like a leaf

stood on end with the gold sprinkled waters

flowing in and about it, it had, she supposed, a

place in the universe—even that little island?

The old gentlemen in the study she thought

could have told her. Sometimes she strayed in

from the garden purposely to catch them at it.

There they were (it might be Mr. Carmichael or

Mr. Bankes, very old, very stiff) sitting opposite

each other in their low arm-chairs. They were

crackling in front of them the pages of The

Times, when she came in from the garden, all in

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