TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

world. And what had happened to him, she
wondered, idly stirring the plantains with her
brush. He had got his fellowship. He had
married; he lived at Colder's Green,

She had gone one day into a Hall and heard

him speaking during the war. He was denouncing

something: he was condemning somebody. He

was preaching brotherly love. And all she felt

was how could he love his kind who did not know

one picture from another, who had stood behind

her smoking shag (" fivepence an ounce, Miss

Briscoe ") and making it his business to tell her

women can't write, women can't paint, not so

much that he believed it, as that for some odd

reason he wished it? There he was, lean and red

and raucous, preaching love from a platform

(there were ants crawling about among the

plantains which she disturbed with her brush—

red, energetic ants, rather like Charles Tansley).

She had looked at him ironically from her seat in

the half-empty hall, pumping love into that chilly

space, and suddenly, there was the old cask or

whatever it was bobbing up and down among the

waves and Mrs, Ramsay looking for her spectacle

case among the pebbles. " Oh dear! What a

nuisance! Lost again. Don't bother, Mr.

Tansley. I lose thousands every summer," at

which he pressed his chin back against his collar,

302