TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

one of those globed compacted things over which
thought lingers, and love plays.

Her eyes rested on the brown speck of Mr.
Ramsay's sailing boat. They would be at the
Lighthouse by lunch time she supposed. But the
wind had freshened, and, as the sky changed
slightly and the sea changed slightly and the
boats altered their positions, the view, which a
moment before had seemed miraculously fixed,
was now unsatisfactory. The wind had blown the
trail of smoke about; there was something dis-
pleasing about the placing of the ships.

The disproportion there seemed to upset some
harmony in her own mind. She felt an obscure
distress. It was confirmed when she turned to
her picture. She had been wasting her morning.
For whatever reason she could not achieve that
razor edge of balance between two opposite
forces; Mr. Ramsay and the picture; which was
necessary. There was something perhaps wrong
with the design? Was it, she wondered, that the
line of the wall wanted breaking, was it that the
mass of the trees was too heavy? She smiled
ironically; for had she not thought, when she
began, that she had solved her problem?

What was the problem then? She must try to
get hold of something that evaded her. It evaded
her when she thought of Mrs. Ramsay; it evaded
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