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"We went back to look for Minta's brooch," he said, sitting down by her. "We"--that was enough.
She knew from the effort, the rise in his voice to surmount a difficult word that it was the first time
he had said "we." "We did this, we did that." They'll say that all their lives, she thought, and an
exquisite scent of olives and oil and juice rose from the great brown dish as Marthe, with a little
flourish, took the cover off. The cook had spent three days over that dish. And she must take great
care, Mrs Ramsay thought, diving into the soft mass, to choose a specially tender piece for William
Bankes. And she peered into the dish, with its shiny walls and its confusion of savoury brown and
yellow meats and its bay leaves and its wine, and thought, This will celebrate the occasion--a
curious sense rising in her, at once freakish and tender, of celebrating a festival, as if two emotions
were called up in her, one profound--for what could be more serious than the love of man for
woman, what more commanding, more impressive, bearing in its bosom the seeds of death; at the
same time these lovers, these people entering into illusion glittering eyed, must be danced round
with mockery, decorated with garlands.
"It is a triumph," said Mr Bankes, laying his knife down for a moment. He had eaten attentively.
It was rich; it was tender. It was perfectly cooked. How did she manage these things in the depths
of the country? he asked her. She was a wonderful woman. All his love, all his reverence, had
returned; and she knew it.
"It is a French recipe of my grandmother's," said Mrs Ramsay, speaking with a ring of great
pleasure in her voice. Of course it was French. What passes for cookery in England is an
abomination (they agreed). It is putting cabbages in water. It is roasting meat till it is like leather. It
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is cutting off the delicious skins of vegetables. "In which," said Mr Bankes, "all the virtue of the
vegetable is contained." And the waste, said Mrs Ramsay. A whole French family could live on
what an English cook throws away. Spurred on by her sense that William's affection had come back
to her, and that everything was all right again, and that her suspense was over, and that now she was
free both to triumph and to mock, she laughed, she gesticulated, till Lily thought, How childlike,
how absurd she was, sitting up there with all her beauty opened again in her, talking about the skins
of vegetables. There was something frightening about her. She was irresistible. Always she got her
own way in the end, Lily thought. Now she had brought this off--Paul and Minta, one might
suppose, were engaged. Mr Bankes was dining here. She put a spell on them all, by wishing, so
simply, so directly, and Lily contrasted that abundance with her own poverty of spirit, and supposed
that it was partly that belief (for her face was all lit up--without looking young, she looked radiant)
in this strange, this terrifying thing, which made Paul Rayley, sitting at her side, all of a tremor, yet
abstract, absorbed, silent. Mrs Ramsay, Lily felt, as she talked about the skins of vegetables, exalted
that, worshipped that; held her hands over it to warm them, to protect it, and yet, having brought it
all about, somehow laughed, led her victims, Lily felt, to the altar. It came over her too now--the
emotion, the vibration, of love. How inconspicuous she felt herself by Paul's side! He, glowing,
burning; she, aloof, satirical; he, bound for adventure; she, moored to the shore; he, ready to
implore a share, if it were a disaster, in his disaster, she said shyly:
"When did Minta lose her brooch?"
He smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by memory, tinged by dreams. He shook his head.
"On the beach," he said.
"I'm going to find it," he said, "I'm getting up early." This being kept secret from Minta, he
lowered his voice, and turned his eyes to where she sat, laughing, beside Mr Ramsay.
Lily wanted to protest violently and outrageously her desire to help him, envisaging how in the
dawn on the beach she would be the one to pounce on the brooch half-hidden by some stone, and
thus herself be included among the sailors and adventurers. But what did he reply to her offer? She
actually said with an emotion that she seldom let appear, "Let me come with you," and he laughed.
He meant yes or no-- either perhaps. But it was not his meaning--it was the odd chuckle he gave, as
if he had said, Throw yourself over the cliff if you like, I don't care. He turned on her cheek the heat
of love, its horror, its cruelty, its unscrupulosity. It scorched her, and Lily, looking at Minta, being
charming to Mr Ramsay at the other end of the table, flinched for her exposed to these fangs, and
was thankful. For at any rate, she said to herself, catching sight of the salt cellar on the pattern, she
need not marry, thank Heaven: she need not undergo that degradation. She was saved from that
dilution. She would move the tree rather more to the middle.
Such was the complexity of things. For what happened to her, especially staying with the
Ramsays, was to be made to feel violently two opposite things at the same time; that's what you
feel, was one; that's what I feel, was the other, and then they fought together in her mind, as now. It
is so beautiful, so exciting, this love, that I tremble on the verge of it, and offer, quite out of my
own habit, to look for a brooch on a beach; also it is the stupidest, the most barbaric of human
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