THE LIGHTHOUSE
13

Mr. Ramsay had almost done reading. One
hand hovered over the page as if to be in readiness
to turn it the very instant he had finished it. He
sat there bareheaded with the wind blowing his
hair about, extraordinarily exposed to everything.
He looked very old. He looked, James thought,
getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now
against the waste of waters running away into the
open, like some old stone lying on the sand; he
looked as if he had become physically what was
always at the back of both of their minds—that
loneliness which was for both of them the truth
about things.

He was reading very quickly, as if he were
eager to get to the end. Indeed they were very
close to the Lighthouse now. There it loomed
up, stark and straight, glaring white and black,
and one could see the waves breaking in white
splinters like smashed glass upon the rocks. One
could see lines and creases in the rocks. One ;
could see the windows clearly; a dab of white on
one of them, and a little tuft of green on the rock.
A man had come out and looked at them through
a glass and gone in again. So it was like that,
James thought, the Lighthouse one had seen
across the bay all these years; it was a stark tower

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