"Mrs Ramsay!" Lily cried, "Mrs Ramsay!" But nothing happened. Thepain increased. That anguish could reduce one to such a pitch of imbecility,she thought! Anyhow the old man had not heard her. He remainedbenignant, calm—if one chose to think it, sublime. Heaven be praised, noone had heard her cry that ignominious cry, stop pain, stop! She had notobviously taken leave of her senses. No one had seen her step off herstrip of board into the waters of annihilation. She remained a skimpy oldmaid, holding a paint-brush.

　　And now slowly the pain of the want, and the bitter anger (to be calledback, just as she thought she would never feel sorrow for Mrs Ramsayagain. Had she missed her among the coffee cups at breakfast? not in theleast) lessened; and of their anguish left, as antidote, a relief that wasbalm in itself, and also, but more mysteriously, a sense of some onethere, of Mrs Ramsay, relieved for a moment of the weight that the worldhad put on her, staying lightly by her side and then (for this was MrsRamsay in all her beauty) raising to her forehead a wreath of whiteflowers with which she went. Lily squeezed her tubes again. She attackedthat problem of the hedge. It was strange how clearly she sawher, stepping with her usual quickness across fields among whose folds,purplish and soft, among whose flowers, hyacinth or lilies, she vanished.

　　It was some trick of the painter's eye. For days after she had heard of herdeath she had seen her thus, putting her wreath to her forehead and goingunquestioningly with her companion, a shade across the fields. Thesight, the phrase, had its power to console. Wherever she happened tobe, painting, here, in the country or in London, the vision would come toher, and her eyes, half closing, sought something to base her vision on.

　　She looked down the railway carriage, the omnibus; took a line fromshoulder or cheek; looked at the windows opposite; at Pi............