But his son hated him. He hated him for coming up to them, for stoppingand looking down on them; he hated him for interrupting them; he hatedhim for the exaltation and sublimity of his gestures; for the magnificenceof his head; for his exactingness and egotism (for there he stood, commandingthem to attend to him) but most of all he hated the twang andtwitter of his father's emotion which, vibrating round them, disturbedthe perfect simplicity and good sense of his relations with his mother. Bylooking fixedly at the page, he hoped to make him move on; by pointinghis finger at a word, he hoped to recall his mother's attention, which, heknew angrily, wavered instantly his father stopped. But, no. Nothingwould make Mr Ramsay move on. There he stood, demandingsympathy.

　　Mrs Ramsay, who had been sitting loosely, folding her son in her arm,braced herself, and, half turning, seemed to raise herself with an effort,and at once to pour erect into the air a rain of energy, a column of spray,looking at the same time animated and alive as if all her energies werebeing fused into force, burning and illuminating (quietly though she sat,taking up her stocking again), and into this delicious fecundity, thisfountain and spray of life, the fatal sterility of the male plunged itself,like a beak of brass, barren and bare. He wanted sympathy. He was afailure, he said. Mrs Ramsay flashed her needles. Mr Ramsay repeated,never taking his eyes from her face, that he was a failure. She blew thewords back at him. "Charles Tansley… " she said. But he must have morethan that. It was sympathy he wanted, to be assured of his genius, first ofall, and then to be taken within the circle of life, warmed and soothed, tohave his senses restored to him, his barrenness made furtile, and all therooms of the house made full of life—the drawing-room; behind thedrawing-room the kitchen; above the kitchen the bedrooms; and beyondthem the nurseries; they must be furnished, they must be filled with life.

　　Charles Tansley thought him the greatest metaphysician of the time,she said. But he must have more than that. He must have sympathy. Hemust be assured that he too lived in the heart of life; was needed; notonly here, but all over the world. Flashing her needles, confident, upright,she created drawing-room and kitchen, set them all aglow; badehim take his ease there, go in and out, enjoy himself. She laughed, sheknitted. Standing between her knees, very stiff, James felt all her strengthflaring up to be drunk and quenched by the beak of brass, the arid scimitarof the male, which smote mercilessly, again and again, demandingsympathy.

　　He was a failure, he repeated. Well, look then, feel then. Flashing herneedles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the room, atJames himself, she assured him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by herlaugh, her poise, her competence (as a nurse carrying a light across adark room assures a fractious child), that it was real; the house was full;the garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurthim; however deep he buried himself or climed high, not for a secondshould he find himself without her. So boasting of her capacity to surroundand protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her toknow herself by; all was so lavished and spent; and James, as he stoodstiff between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid withleaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitarof his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demandingsympathy.

　　Filled with her words, like a child who drops off satisfied, he said, atlast, looking at her with humble gratitude, restored, renewed, that hewould take a turn; he would watch the children playing cricket. Hewent.

　　Immediately, Mrs Ramsey seemed to fold herself together, one petalclosed in another, and the whole fabric fell in exhaustion upon itself, sothat she had only strength enough to move her finger, in exquisite abandonmentto exhaustion, across the page of Grimm's fairy story, whilethere throbbed through her, like a pulse in a spring which has expandedto its full width and now gently ceases to beat, the rapture of successfulcreation.

　　Every throb of this pulse seemed, as he walked away, to enclose herand her husband, and to give to each that solace which two differentnotes, one high, one low, struck together, seem to give each other as theycombine. Yet as the resonance died, and she turned to the Fairy Taleagain, Mrs Ramsey felt not only exhausted in body (afterwards, not atthe time, she always felt this) but also there tinged her physical fatiguesome faintly disagreeable sensation with another origin. Not that, as sheread aloud the story of the Fisherman's Wife, she knew precisely what itcame from; nor did she let herself put into words her dissatisfactionwhen she realized, at the turn of the page when she stopped and hearddully, ominously, a wave fall, how it came from this: she did not like,even for a second, to feel finer than her husband; and further, could notbear not being entirely sure, when she spoke to him, of the truth of whatshe said. Universities and people wanting him, lectures and books andtheir being of the highest importance—all that she did not doubt for amoment; but it was their relation, and his coming to her like that, openly,so that any one could see, that discomposed her; for then people said hedepended on her, when they must know that of the two he was infinitelythe more important, and what she gave the world, in comparison withwhat he gave, negligable. But then again, it was the other thing too—notbeing able to tell him the truth, being afraid, for instance, about thegreenhouse roof and the expense it would be, fifty pounds perhaps tomend it; and then about his books, to be afraid that he might guess, whatshe a little suspected, that his last book was not quite his best book (shegathered that from William Bankes); and then to hide small daily things,and the children seeing it, and the burden it laid on them—all this diminishedthe entire joy, the pure joy, of the two notes sounding together, andlet the sound die on her ear now with a dismal flatness.

　　A shadow was on the page; she looked up. It was Augustus Carmichaelshuffling past, precisely now, at the very moment when it waspainful to be reminded of the inadequacy of human relationships, thatthe most perfect was flawed, and could not bear the examination which,loving her husband, with her instinct for truth, she turned upon it; whenit was painful to feel herself convicted of unworthiness, and impeded inher proper function by these lies, these exaggerations,—it was at this momentwhen she was fretted thus ignobly in the wake of her exaltation,that Mr Carmichael shuffled past, in his yellow slippers, and some demonin her made it necessary for her to call out, as he passed,"Going indoors Mr Carmichael?"