No, she thought, putting together some of the pictures he had cut out— arefrigerator, a mowing machine, a gentleman in evening dress— childrennever forget. For this reason, it was so important what one said, andwhat one did, and it was a relief when they went to bed. For now sheneed not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And thatwas what now she often felt the need of—to think; well, not even tothink. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive,glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity,to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisibleto others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thusthat she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free forthe strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the rangeof experience seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always thissense of unlimited resources, she supposed; one after another, she, Lily,Augustus Carmichael, must feel, our apparitions, the things you knowus by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it isunfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that iswhat you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless. There were allthe places she had not seen; the Indian plains; she felt herself pushingaside the thick leather curtain of a church in Rome. This core of darknesscould go anywhere, for no one saw it. They could not stop it, shethought, exulting. There was freedom, there was peace, there was, mostwelcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability.

　　Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplishedhere something dexterous with her needles) but as a wedge ofdarkness. Losing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; andthere rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life whenthings came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity; and pausingthere she looked out to meet that stroke of the Lighthouse, the longsteady stroke, the last of the three, which was her stroke, for watchingthem in this mood always at this hour one could not help attachingoneself to one thing especially of the things one saw; and this thing, thelong steady stroke, was her stroke. Often she found herself sitting andlooking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she becamethe thing she looked at—that light, for example. And it would liftup on it some little phrase or other which had been lying in her mind likethat—"Children don't forget, children don't forget"—which she wouldrepeat and begin adding to it, It will end, it will end, she said. It willcome, it will come, when suddenly she added, We are in the hands of theLord.

　　But instantly she was annoyed with herself for saying that. Who hadsaid it? Not she; she had been trapped into saying something she did notmean. She looked up over her knitting and met the third stroke and itseemed to her like her own eyes meeting her own eyes, searching as shealone could search into her mind and her heart, purifying out of existencethat lie, any lie. She praised herself in praising the light, withoutvanity, for she was stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like thatlight. It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to inanimatethings; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they becameone; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tendernessthus (she looked at that long stead............