(Certainly, Nancy had gone with them, since Minta Doyle had asked itwith her dumb look, holding out her hand, as Nancy made off, afterlunch, to her attic, to escape the horror of family life. She supposed shemust go then. She did not want to go. She did not want to be drawn intoit all. For as they walked along the road to the cliff Minta kept on takingher hand. Then she would let it go. Then she would take it again. Whatwas it she wanted? Nancy asked herself. There was something, of course,that people wanted; for when Minta took her hand and held it, Nancy,reluctantly, saw the whole world spread out beneath her, as if it wereConstantinople seen through a mist, and then, however heavy-eyed onemight be, one must needs ask, "Is that Santa Sofia?" "Is that the GoldenHorn?" So Nancy asked, when Minta took her hand. "What is it that shewants? Is it that?" And what was that? Here and there emerged from themist (as Nancy looked down upon life spread beneath her) a pinnacle, adome; prominent things, without names. But when Minta dropped herhand, as she did when they ran down the hillside, all that, the dome, thepinnacle, whatever it was that had protruded through the mist, sankdown into it and disappeared. Minta, Andrew observed, was rather agood walker. She wore more sensible clothes that most women. Shewore very short skirts and black knickerbockers. She would jumpstraight into a stream and flounder across. He liked her rashness, but hesaw that it would not do—she would kill herself in some idiotic way oneof these days. She seemed to be afraid of nothing—except bulls. At themere sight of a bull in a field she would throw up her arms and flyscreaming, which was the very thing to enrage a bull of course. But shedid not mind owning up to it in the least; one must admit that. She knewshe was an awful coward about bulls, she said. She thought she musthave been tossed in her perambulator when she was a baby. She didn'tseem to mind what she said or did. Suddenly now she pitched down onthe edge of the cliff and began to sing some song aboutDamn your eyes, damn your eyes.

　　They all had to join in and sing the chorus, and shout out together:

　　Damn your eyes, damn your eyes,but it would be fatal to let the tide come in and cover up all the goodhunting-grounds before they got on to the beach.

　　"Fatal," Paul agreed, springing up, and as they went slithering down,he kept quoting the guide-book about "these islands being justly celebratedfor their park-like prospects and the extent and variety of theirmarine curiosities." But it would not do altogether, this shouting anddamning your eyes, Andrew felt, picking his way down the cliff, thisclapping him on the back, and calling him "old fellow" and all that; itwould not altogether do. It was the worst of taking women on walks.

　　Once on the beach they separated, he going out on to the Pope's Nose,taking his shoes off, and rolling his socks in them and letting that couplelook after themselves; Nancy waded out to her own rocks and searchedher own pools and let that couple look after themselves. She crouchedlow down and touched the smooth rubber-like sea anemones, who werestuck like lumps of jelly to the side of the rock. Brooding, she changedthe pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales,and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against thesun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millionsof ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand awaysuddenly and let the sun stream down. Out on the pale criss-crossedsand, high-stepping, fringed, gauntleted, stalked some fantastic leviathan(she was still enlarging the pool), and slipped into the vast fissures ofthe mountain side. And then, letting her eyes slide imperceptibly abovethe pool and rest on that wavering line of sea and sky, on the tree trunkswhich the smoke of steamers made waver on the horizon, she becamewith all that power sweeping savagely in and inevitably withdrawing,hypnotised, and the two senses of that vastness and this tininess (thepool had diminished again) flowering within it made her feel that shewas bound hand and foot and unable to move by the intensity of feelingswhich reduced her own body, her own life, and the lives of all the peoplein the world, for ever, to nothingness. So listening to the waves, crouchingover the pool, she brooded.

　　And Andrew shouted that the sea was coming in, so she leapt splashingthrough the shallow waves on to the shore and ran up the beach andwas carried by her own impetuosity and her desire for rapid movementright behind a rock and there—oh, heavens! in each other's arms, werePaul and Minta kissing probably. She was outraged, indignant. She andAndrew put on their shoes and stockings in dead silence without sayinga thing about it. Indeed they were rather sharp with each other. Shemight have called him when she saw the crayfish or whateve............