TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

Look at him now, she wanted to say aloud to
James. (But James had his eye on the sail)
He is a sarcastic brute, James would say. He;
brings the talk round to himself and his books,'
James would say. He is intolerably egotistical,
Worst of all, he is a tyrant. But look! she
said, looking at him. Look at him now. She
looked at him reading the little book with his
legs curled; the little book whose yellowish pages
she knew, without knowing what was written
on them. It was small; it was closely printed;
on the fly-leaf, she knew, he had written that he
had spent fifteen francs on dinner; the wine had
been so much; he had given so much to the
waiter; all was added up neatly at the bottom of
the page. But what might be written in the book
which had rounded its edges off in his pocket, she
did not know. What he thought they none of
them knew. But he was absorbed in it, so that
when he looked up, as he did now for an instant, it
was not to see anything; it was to pin down some
thought more exactly. That done, his mind
flew back again and he plunged into his reading.
He read, she thought, as if he were guiding some-
thing, or wheedling a large flock of sheep, or
pushing his way up and up a single narrow path;
and sometimes he went fast and straight, and broke
his way through the thicket, and sometimes it