Chapter 37 Chapter VII

"Mrs. Ramsay!" Lily called, "Mrs. Ramsay!" But nothing happened.She felt more pain.She thought that the severe pain would make her do such a foolish thing!Anyway, luckily the old man didn't hear her cry.He was still benevolent and serene - if you will - sublime.Thank goodness no one heard her humiliating cry.Stop it, grief, stop it!She's clearly not out of her mind yet.No one saw her step across the narrow diving board and plunge into the torrent of destruction.She was still a wizened spinster with a paintbrush in hand. Now, the pain and fierce anger that she couldn't ask for was gradually lessening (she subsided her pain and anger when she thought that she would no longer grieve for Mrs. Ramsay. As she sat between those coffee cups eating Did she miss Mrs. Ramsay at breakfast? Not at all); as an antidote to the lingering pain, a sense of relief and relaxation is itself a balm for pain, and, moreover, there is a A still more mysterious sense of presence: she felt that Mrs. Ramsay, momentarily released from the weight of the world upon her, had floated to her side (in all her beauty), The white garland she wore at her deathbed was raised to her brow.Lily squeezed a little more paint onto the palette.She waved her paintbrush and began to trace the fence.It was strange how clearly she saw Mrs. Ramsay, walking with her usual light step, across the field, disappearing among the hyacinths or lilies among the purple, softly undulating rows.This is the trick played by the painter's eye.In the few days after she had heard of Mrs Ramsay's death she had seen her thus wreathed her brow, crossing the field with her companion - a shadow - without hesitation .That scene, that fragment, has its own consoling power.Wherever she paints, here, in the country, in London, the phantom always comes to her, and she half-closes her eyes, looking for something on which to base the phantom.She looked down at train carriages and buses; she took a line from a shoulder or a cheek; she looked at the opposite window, at Piccadilly Circus, lit by strings of electric lights at dusk.All of this was once part of the graveyard of death.But often something--it might be a face, a voice, a newsboy calling: "Standard, News"--suddenly flashed by, stopped her reverie, woke her up, As a result of her efforts to focus, the illusion had to be constantly reshaped.Now, out of some instinctive need for the vastness of the sky and the blue sea, she looked down at the bay below: rows of blue waves like hills and peaks, deeper purple spaces like fields paved with stones , she was startled, as usual, by something incongruous.In the middle of the bay, there is a small brown dot.Yes, after a second, she understood: it was a lonely boat.Whose ship is that?Mr Ramsay's boat, she answered.Mr. Ramsay, the man in the fine leather shoes, with his right hand held high, leading a procession past her, had asked her for sympathy and she had refused.The boat was now halfway across the bay.

That morning was so clear, with only occasional breezes. Looking far away, the blue sea and the sky are connected as one, as if a few solitary sails were hanging high in the sky, or white clouds were falling on the sea.On the distant sea, a steamer belched a plume of smoke, which rolled and lingered in the air, adorning the landscape, as if the air above the sea were a veil of mist, which softened everything. shrouded in its mesh, let them gently rippling back and forth.Sometimes the sky is clear and the waves are as flat as glass, and the cliffs seem to be aware of the sailing ships passing by, and the small boats seem to be aware of the cliffs, as if they communicate with each other and communicate with each other.Sometimes a lighthouse that is very close to the coast seems very far away in the hazy mist of this morning.

Lili looked at the sea and thought, "Where are they now?" The old man who passed her silently with a brown paper bag under his arm, where is he?The boat is in the middle of the bay.