THE LIGHTHOUSE

She did not know what he had done, when he
heard that Andrew was killed, but she felt it in
him all the same. They only mumbled at each
other on staircases; they looked up at the sky
and said it will be fine or it won't be fine. But
this was one way of knowing people, she thought:
to know the outline, not the detail, to sit in one's
garden and look at the slopes of a hill running
purple down into the distant heather. She knew
him in that way. She knew that he had changed
somehow. She had never read a line of his poetry.
She thought that she knew how it went though,
slowly and sonorously. It was seasoned and
mellow. It was about the desert and the camel.
It was about the palm tree and the sunset. It was
extremely impersonal; it said something about
death; it said very little about love. There was an
aloofness about him. He wanted very little of
other people. Had he not always lurched rather
awkwardly past the drawing-room window with
some newspaper under his arm, trying to avoid
Mrs. Ramsay whom for some reason he did not
much like? On that account, of course, she would
always try to make him stop. He would bow to
her. He would halt unwillingly and bow pro-
foundly. Annoyed that he did not want anything
of her, Mrs. Ramsay would ask him (Lily could
hear her) wouldn't he like a coat, a rug, a news-

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