Suddenly she remembered those little paths on the edge of the cliffs.

     Wasn't it late? she asked. They hadn't come home yet. He flicked his watch carlessly open. But it was only just past seven. He held his watch open for a moment, deciding that he would tell her what he had felt on the terrace. To begin with, it was not reasonable to be so nervous. Andrew could look after himself. Then, he wanted to tell her that when he was walking on the terrace just now --

here he became uncomfortable, as if he were breaking into that solitude, that aloofness, that remoteness of hers.... But she pressed him. What had he wanted to tell her, she asked, thinking it was  

about going to the Lighthouse; that he was sorry he had said “Damn you.” But no. He did not like to see her look so sad, he said. Only wool gathering she protested, flushing a little. They both felt uncomfortable, as if they did not know whether to go on or go back. She had been reading fairy tales to James, she said. No, they could not share that;

they could not say that.

     They had reached the gap between the two clumps of red-​hot pokers, and there was the Lighthouse again, but she would not let herself look at it. Had she known that he was looking at her she thought, she would not have let herself sit there thinking. She disliked anything that reminded her that she had been seen sitting thinking. So she looked over her shoulder, at the town. The lights were rippling and running as if they were drops of silver water held firm in a wind. And all the poverty all the suffering had turned to that, Mrs. Ramsay thought. The lights of the town and of the harbour and of the boats seemed like a phantom net floating there to mark something which had sunk. Well if he could not share her thoughts, Mr. Ramsay said to himself, he would be off, then, on his own.

He wanted to go on thinking, telling himself the story how Hume was stuck in a bog; he wanted to laugh. But first it was nonsense to be anxious  

about Andrew. When he was Andrew's age he used to walk about the country all day long, with nothing but a biscuit in his pocket and nobody bothered about him, or thought that he had fallen over a cliff. He said aloud he thought he would be off for a day's walk if the weather held. He had had about enough of Bankes and of Carmichael. He would like a little solitude.  Yes, she said. It annoyed him that she did not protest.