So they're gone, she thought, sighing with relief and disappointment.

　　Her sympathy seemed to be cast back on her, like a bramble sprungacross her face. She felt curiously divided, as if one part of her weredrawn out there—it was a still day, hazy; the Lighthouse looked thismorning at an immense distance; the other had fixed itself doggedly,solidly, here on the lawn. She saw her canvas as if it had floated up andplaced itself white and uncompromising directly before her. It seemed torebuke her with its cold stare for all this hurry and agitation; this follyand waste of emotion; it drastically recalled her and spread through hermind first a peace, as her disorderly sensations (he had gone and she hadbeen so sorry for him and she had said nothing) trooped off the field;and then, emptiness. She looked blankly at the canvas, with its uncompromisingwhite stare; from the canvas to the garden. There wassomething (she stood screwing up her little Chinese eyes in her smallpuckered face), something she remembered in the relations of those linescutting across, slicing down, and in the mass of the hedge with its greencave of blues and browns, which had stayed in her mind; which had tieda knot in her mind so that at odds and ends of time, involuntarily, as shewalked along the Brompton Road, as she brushed her hair, she foundherself painting that picture, passing her eye over it, and untying theknot in imagination. But there was all the difference in the worldbetween this planning airily away from the canvas and actually takingher brush and making the first mark.

　　She had taken the wrong brush in her agitation at Mr Ramsay's presence,and her easel, rammed into the earth so nervously, was at thewrong angle. And now that she had ut that right, and in so doing hadsubdued the impertinences and irrelevances that plucked her attentionand made her remember how she was such and such a person, had suchand such relations to people, she took her hand and raised her brush. Fora moment it stayed trembling in a painful but exciting ecstasy in the air.

　　Where to begin?—that was the question at what point to make the firstmark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerablerisks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemedsimple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shapethemselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer amongthem are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk mustbe run; the mark made.

　　With a curious physical sensation, as if she were urged forward and atthe same time must hold herself back, she made her first quick decisivestroke. The brush descended. It flickered brown over the white canvas; itleft a running mark. A second time she did it—a third time. And sopausing and so flickering, she attained a dancing rhythmical movement,as if the pauses were one part of the rhythm and the strokes another, andall were related; and so, lightly and swiftly pausing, striking, she scoredher canvas with brown running nervous lines which had no soonersettled there than they enclosed ( she felt it looming out at her) a space.

　　Down in the hollow of one wave she saw the next wave towering higherand higher above her. For what could be more formidable than thatspace? Here she was again, she thought, stepping back to look at it,drawn out of gossip, out of living, out of community with people intothe presence of this formidable ancient enemy of hers—this other thing,this truth, this reality, which suddenly laid hands on her, emerged starkat the back of appearances and commanded her attention. She was halfunwilling, half reluctant. Why always be drawn out and haled away?

　　Why not left in peace, to talk to Mr Carmichael on the lawn? It was anexacting form of intercourse anyhow. Other worshipful objects were contentwith worship; men, women, God, all let one kneel prostrate; but thisform, were it only the shape of a white lamp-shade looming on a wickertable, roused one to perpetual combat, challenged one to a fight in whichone was bound to be worsted. Always (it was in her nature, or in her sex,she did not know which) before she exchanged the fluidity of life for theconcentration of painting she had a few moments of nakedness when sheseemed like an unborn soul, a soul reft of body, hesitating on somewindy pinnacle and exposed without protection to all the blasts ofdoubt. Why then did she do it? She looked at the canvas, lightly scoredwith running lines. It would be hung in the servants' bedrooms. It wouldbe rolled up and stuffed under a sofa. What was the good of doing itthen, and she heard some voice saying she couldn't paint, saying shecouldn't create, as if she were caught up in one of those habitual currentsin which after a certain time experience forms in the mind, so that one repeatswords without being aware any longer who originally spoke them.

　　Can't paint, can't write, she murmured monotonously, anxiously consideringwhat her plan of attack should be. For the mass loomed beforeher; it protruded; she felt it pressing on her eyeballs. Then, as if somejuice necessary for the lubrication of her faculties were spontaneouslysquirted, she began precariously dipping among the blues and umbers,moving her brush hither and thither, but it was now heavier and wentslower, as if it had fallen in with some rhythm which was dictated to her(she kept looking at the hedge, at the canvas) by what she rhythm wasstrong enough to bear her along with it on its current. Certainly she wasl............