“He has landed,” she said aloud. “It is finished.” Then, surging up, puffing slightly, old Mr. Carmichael stood beside her, looking like an old pagan God, shaggy, with weeds in his hair and the trident (it was only a French novel) in his hand. He stood by her on the edge of the lawn, swaying a little in his bulk, and said, shading his eyes with his hand: “They will have landed,” and she felt that she had been right. They had not needed to speak. They had been thinking the same things and he had answered her without her asking him anything. He stood there spreading his hands over all the weakness and suffering of mankind; she thought he was surveying, tolerantly, compassionately, their final destiny. Now he has crowned the occasion, she thought, when his hand slowly fell, as if she had seen him let fall from his great height a wreath of violets and asphodels which, fluttering slowly, lay at length upon the earth.
Quickly, as if she were recalled by something over there, she turned to her canvas. There it was—her picture. Yes, with all its green and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.
Colophon
To the Lighthouse
was published in 1927 by
Virginia Woolf.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
L. A. Vermeer and B. Timothy Keith,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2019 by
Delphine Lettau, Al Haines, Howard Ross, and The Online Distributed Proofreaders Canada Team
for
Faded Page Canada
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Seascape at Port-en-Bessin,
a painting completed in 1888 by
Georges Seurat.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
January 1, 2023, 8:42 p.m.
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Uncopyright
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