Yes, Mr Bankes said, watching him go. It was a thousand pities. (Lily hadsaid something about his frightening her—he changed from one mood toanother so suddenly.) Yes, said Mr Bankes, it was a thousand pities thatRamsay could not behave a little more like other people. (For he likedLily Briscoe; he could discuss Ramsay with her quite openly.) It was forthat reason, he said, that the young don't read Carlyle. A crusty oldgrumbler who lost his temper if the porridge was cold, why should hepreach to us? was what Mr Bankes understood that young people saidnowadays. It was a thousand pities if you thought, as he did, that Carlylewas one of the great teachers of mankind. Lily was ashamed to say thatshe had not read Carlyle since she was at school. But in her opinion oneliked Mr Ramsay all the better for thinking that if his little finger achedthe whole world must come to an end. It was not THAT she minded. Forwho could be deceived by him? He asked you quite openly to flatterhim, to admire him, his little dodges deceived nobody. What she dislikedwas his narrowness, his blindness, she said, looking after him.

　　"A bit of a hypocrite?" Mr Bankes suggested, looking too at MrRamsay's back, for was he not thinking of his friendship, and of Cam refusingto give him a flower, and of all those boys and girls, and his ownhouse, full of comfort, but, since his wife's death, quiet rather? Of course,he had his work… All the same, he rather wished Lily to agree that Ram-say was, as he said, "a bit of a hypocrite."Lily Briscoe went on putting away her brushes, looking up, lookingdown. Looking up, there he was—Mr Ramsay—advancing towardsthem, swinging, careless, oblivious, remote. A bit of a hypocrite? she repeated.

　　Oh, no—the most sincere of men, the truest (here he was), thebest; but, looking down, she thought, he is absorbed in himself, he is tyrannical,he is unjust; and kept looking down, purposely, for only socould she keep steady, staying with the Ramsays. Directly one looked upand saw them, what she called "being in love" flooded them. They becamepart of that unreal but penetrating and exciting universe which isthe world seen through the eyes of love. The sky stuck to them; the birdssang through them. And, what was even more exciting, she felt, too, asshe saw Mr Ramsay bearing down and retreating, and Mrs Ramsay sittingwith James in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending,how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which onelived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore oneup and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.

　　Mr Bankes expected her to answer. And she was about to saysomething criticizing Mrs Ramsay, how she was alarming, too, in herway, high-handed, or words to that effect, when Mr Bankes made it entirelyunnecessary for her to speak by his rapture. For such it was consideringhis age, turned sixty, and his cleanliness and his impersonality, andthe white scientific coat which seemed to clothe him. For him to gaze asLily saw him gazing at Mrs Ramsay was a rapture, equivalent, Lily felt,to the loves of dozens of young men (and perhaps Mrs Ramsay had neverexcited the loves of dozens of young men). It was love, she thought,pretending to move her canvas, distilled and filtered; love that never attemptedto clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians beartheir symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over theworld and become part of the human gain. So it was indeed. The worldby all means should have shared it, could Mr Bankes have said why thatwoman pleased him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to herboy had upon him precisely the same effect as the solution of a scientificproblem, so that he rested in contemplation of it, and felt, as he felt whenhe had proved something absolute about the digestive system of plants,that barbarity was tamed, the reign of chaos subdued.

　　Such a rapture—for by what other name could one call it?—made LilyBriscoe forget entirely what she had been about to say. It was nothing ofimportance; something about Mrs Ramsay. It paled beside this "rapture,"this silent stare, for which she felt intense gratitude; for nothing sosolaced her, eased her of the perplexity of life, and miraculously raisedits burdens, as this sublime power, this heavenly gift, and one would nomore disturb it, while it lasted, than break up the shaft of sunlight, lyinglevel across the floor.

　　That people should love like this, that Mr Bankes should feel this forMrs Ramsey (she glanced at him musing) was helpful, was exalting. Shewiped one brush after another upon a piece of old rag, menially, on purpose.

　　She took shelter from the reverence which covered all women; shefelt herself praised. Let him gaze; she would steal a look at her picture.

　　She could have wept. It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad! Shecould have done it differently of course; the colour could have beenthinned and faded; the shapes etherealised; that was how Pauncefortewould have seen it. But then she did not see it like that. She saw the col-our burning on a framework of steel; the light of a butterfly's wing lyingupon the arches of a cathedral. Of all that only a few random marksscrawled upon the canvas remained. And it would never be seen; neverbe hung even, and there was Mr Tansley whispering in her ear, "Womencan't paint, women can't write… "She now remembered what she had been going to say about Mrs Ram-say. She did not know how she would have put it; but it would havebeen something critical. She had been annoyed the other night by somehighhandedness. Looking along the level of Mr Bankes's glance at her,she thought that no woman could worship another woman in the way heworshipped; they could only seek shelter under the shade which MrBankes extended over them both. Looking along his beam she added toit her different ray, thinking that she was unquestionably the loveliest ofpeople (bowed over her book); the best perhaps; but also, different toofrom the perfect shape which one saw there. But why different, and howdifferent? she asked herself, scraping her palette of all those mounds ofblue and green which seemed to her like clods with no life in them now,yet she vowed, she would inspire them, force them to move, flow, do herbidding tomorrow. How did she differ? What was the spirit in her, theessential thing, by which, had you found a crumpled glove in the cornerof a sofa, you would have known it, from its twisted finger, hers indisputably?

　　She was like a bird for speed, an arrow for directness. She waswillful; she was commanding (of course, Lily reminded herself, I amthinking of her relations with women, and I am much younger, an insignificantperson, living off the Brompton Road). She opened bedroomwindows. She shut doors. (So she tried to start the tune of Mrs Ramsayin her head.) Arriving late at night, with a light tap on one's bedroomdoor, wrapped in an old fur coat (for the setting of her beauty was alwaysthat—hasty, but apt), she would enact again whatever it mightbe—Charles Tansley losing his umbrella; Mr Carmichael snuffling andsniffing; Mr Bankes saying, "The vegetable salts are lost." All this shewould adroitly shape; even maliciously twist; and, moving over to thewindow, in pretence that she must go,—it was dawn, she could see thesun rising,—half turn back, more intimately, but still always laughing,insist that she must, Minta must, they all must marry, since in the wholeworld whatever laurels might be tossed to her (but Mrs Ramsay carednot a fig for her painting), or triumphs won by her (probably Mrs Ram-say had had her share of those), and here she saddened, darkened, andcame back to her chair, there could be no disputing this: an unmarriedwoman (she lightly took her hand for a moment), an unmarried womanhas missed the best of life. The house seemed full of children sleepingand Mrs Ramsay listening; shaded lights and regular breathing.

　　Oh, but, Lily would............