Chapter 14 Chapter Thirteen

Mr. Banksy said as he and Lily Briscoe walked across the lawn that he had been to Amsterdam and had seen Rembrandt.He had been to Madrid, but unfortunately, it was Good Friday and the Prado was closed.He has been to Rome.Miss Briscoe never been to Rome?Oh, she must go once—it will be a wonderful experience for her—there are the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, the original Michelangelo, and the Giotto in the Batua Gallery. famous paintings.His wife had been infirm for many years, so they were just passing by, not enjoying themselves. She has been to Brussels.She had been to Paris, but only for a short, hasty stay, to visit her sick aunt.She has been to Dresden, and there are many famous paintings there that she has not seen.However, Lily reflected that it might be better not to visit, those famous paintings will only make you completely disappointed in your own works.Mr Banks thinks one can take this view too far.We couldn't all be Titians, and we couldn't all be Darwins; at the same time, he doubted there would have been Darwins and Titians without us mortals.Lily would like to compliment him, she would like to say, Mr Bankes, you are not a man.But he didn't want compliments (most men do, she thought), and she felt a little embarrassed by her own impulsiveness and kept her mouth shut.On the other hand, he said, maybe what he said didn't apply to painting.Lily overcame her shyness and sincerely said that she would always devote herself to painting because it interested her.Yes, said Mr Banks, he believed she would carry on.When they reached the end of the lawn, he asked her if she had difficulty finding subjects to paint in London.They turned and saw the Ramsays.That's marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman watching a little girl throw a ball.That's what Mrs Ramsay tried to tell me that night, she thought.Mrs. Ramsay was wearing a green scarf, and they stood close together, watching Prue and Jesper throw a softball.I don't know why, but maybe just as the two of them stepped out of the subway or rang the doorbell, some consciousness that made people a symbol, a representative, suddenly fell on them, making them stand in the twilight. , watching, make them symbols of marriage: husband and wife.Then, after a while, that symbolic silhouette that transcends the real person recedes again, and when Banks and Lily meet them, they are Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay again, watching the children throw a softball.Mrs. Ramsay welcomed them with her usual smile (oh, she thought we were getting married again, Lily thought), and said, "I've won tonight," implying that Mr. Banks agreed to dine with them instead of going back to his dormitory to eat his cook's properly cooked vegetables; though Mrs. Ramsay smiled, when the softball was thrown high into the air, their eyes followed It, but there was no sign of it, only the star and the overhanging branch, and for a moment they still had the feeling that something was shattered, a sense of emptiness, a sense of groundlessness.In the fading twilight they all looked thin, ethereal, and distant.Then suddenly Prue came rushing back from the wide open space (for, as it seemed, everything had completely melted into the night), and she dashed between them at full speed, catching the softball high with her left hand beautifully, and she His mother said, "Haven't they come back yet?" And the trance-like silence was broken.Mr. Ramsay felt that he was now free to laugh aloud, and with a chuckle at the thought of Hume once in the bog and an old woman who had to say the Lord's Prayer to rescue him, went up to his side. Went to the study.Mrs. Ramsay tells Prue to come back and throw the ball because she's gone.she asked:

"Did Nancy go out with them?"