He was smiling at her, quizzically as if he were ridiculing her gently for being asleep in broad daylight, but at the same time he was thinking, Go on reading. You don't look sad now, he thought. And he wondered what she was reading and exaggerated her ignorance, her simplicity, for he liked to think that she was not clever, not book-​learned at all. He wondered if she understood what she was reading. Probably not, he thought. She was astonishingly beautiful. Her beauty seemed to him if that were possible, to increase        Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away        As with your shadow I with these did play she finished.

  “Well?” she said, echoing his smile dreamily looking up from her book.

       As with your shadow I with these did play she murmured, putting the book on the table.

  What had happened, she wondered, as she took up her knitting, since she had seen him alone? She remembered dressing, and seeing the moon; Andrew holding his plate too high at dinner; being depressed by something William had said; the birds in the trees; the sofa on the landing; the children being  

awake; Charles Tansley waking them with his books falling -- oh, no, that she had invented; and Paul having a wash-​leather case for his watch.

Which should she tell him about?

  “They're engaged,” she said, beginning to knit “Paul and Minta.”

  “So I guessed,” he said. There was nothing very much to be said about it. Her mind was still going up and down, up and down with the poetry; he was still feeling very vigorous, very forthright, after reading about Steenie's funeral. So they sat silent.

Then she became aware that she wanted him to say something.

  Anything, anything, she thought, going on with her knitting. Anything will do.

  “ How nice it would be to marry a man with a wash-​leather bag for his watch, ” she said, for that was the sort of joke they had together.

  He snorted. He felt about this engagement as he always felt about any engagement; the girl is much too good for that young man. Slowly it came into her head, why is it then that one wants people to marry? What was the value, the meaning of things? (Every word they said now would be true.)

Do say something, she thought, wishing only to hear his voice. For the shadow, the thing folding them in was beginning, she felt, to close round her  

again. Say anything, she begged, looking at him as if for help.

  He was silent, swinging the compass on his watch-​chain to and fro, and thinking of Scott's novels and Balzac's novels. But through the crepuscular walls of their intimacy, for they were drawing together involuntarily, coming side by side, quite close, she could feel his mind like a raised hand shadowing her mind; and he was beginning, now that her thoughts took a turn he disliked -- towards this “pessimism”

as he called it -- to fidget, though he said nothing raising his hand to his forehead, twisting a lock of hair, letting it fall again.

  “You won't finish that stocking tonight,” he said pointing to her stocking. That was what she wanted -- the asperity in his voice reproving her. If he says it's wrong to be pessimistic probably it is wrong she thought; the marriage will turn out all right.

  “No,” she said, flattening the stocking out upon her knee, “I shan't finish it.”

  And what then? For she felt that he was still looking at her, but that his look had changed. He wanted something -- wanted the thing she always found it so difficult to give him; wanted her to tell him that she loved him. And that, no, she could not do. He found talking so much easier than she did.

He could say things -- she never could. So naturally it was always he that said the things, and then for some reason he would mind this suddenly, and would reproach her. A heartless woman he called her; she never told him that she loved him. But it was not so -- it was not so. It was only that she never could say what she felt. Was there no crumb on his coat? Nothing she could do for him? Getting up, she stood at the window with the reddish-​brown stocking in her hands, partly to turn away from him partly because she remembered how beautiful it often is -- the sea at night. But she knew that he had turned his head as she turned; he was watching her.

She knew that he was thinking , You are more beautiful than ever. And she felt herself very beautiful.

Will you not tell me just for once that you love me?

He was thinking that, for he was roused, what with Minta and his book, and its being the end of the day and their having quarrelled about going to the Lighthouse. But she could not do it; she could not say it. Then, knowing that he was watching her instead of saying anything she turned, holding her stocking, and looked at him.