She looked. She could not show him what she wished to make of it

　　He had raised his hand. He had slightly narrowed his clear blue eyes,when Lily, rousing herself, saw what he was at, and winced like a dogwho sees a hand raised to strike it. She would have snatched her pictureoff the easel, but she said to herself, One must. She braced herself tostand the awful trial of some one looking at her picture. One must, shesaid, one must. And if it must be seen, Mr Bankes was less alarming thananother. But that any other eyes should see the residue of her thirty-threeyears, the deposit of each day's living mixed with something more secretthan she had ever spoken or shown in the course of all those days was anagony. At the same time it was immensely exciting.
　　Nothing could be cooler and quieter. Taking out a pen-knife, MrBankes tapped the canvas with the bone handle. What did she wish toindicate by the triangular purple shape, "just there"? he asked.
　　It was Mrs Ramsay reading to James, she said. She knew his objection—that no one could tell it for a human shape. But she had made no attempt at likeness, she said. For what reason had she introduced themthen? he asked. Why indeed?—except that if there, in that corner, it wasbright, here, in this, she felt the need of darkness. Simple, obvious, commonplace,as it was, Mr Bankes was interested. Mother and childthen—objects of universal veneration, and in this case the mother wasfamous for her beauty—might be reduced, he pondered, to a purpleshadow without irreverence.
　　But the picture was not of them, she said. Or, not in his sense. Therewere other senses too in which one might reverence them. By a shadowhere and a light there, for instance. Her tribute took that form if, as shevaguely supposed, a picture must be a tribute. A mother and child mightbe reduced to a shadow without irreverence. A light here required ashadow there. He considered. He was interested. He took it scientificallyin complete good faith. The truth was that all his prejudices were on theother side, he explained. The largest picture in his drawing-room, whichpainters had praised, and valued at a higher price than he had given forit, was of the cherry trees in blossom on the banks of the Kennet. He hadspent his honeymoon on the banks of the Kennet, he said. Lily mustcome and see that picture, he said. But now—he turned, with his glassesraised to the scientific examination of her canvas. The question being oneof the relations of masses, of lights and shadows, which, to be honest, hehad never considered before, he would like to have it explained—whatthen did she wish to make of it? And he indicated the scene before them.
　　She looked. She could not show him what she wished to make of it,could not see it even herself, without a brush in her hand. She took uponce more her old painting position with the dim eyes and the absentmindedmanner, subduing all her impressions as a woman to somethingmuch more general; becoming once more under the power of that visionwhich she had seen clearly once and must now grope for among hedgesand houses and mothers and children—her picture. It was a question,she remembered, how to connect this mass on the right hand with thaton the left. She might do it by bringing the line of the branch across so; orbreak the vacancy in the foreground by an object (James perhaps) so. Butthe danger was that by doing that the unity of the whole might bebroken. She stopped; she did not want to bore him; she took the canvaslightly off the easel.
　　But it had been seen; it had been taken from her. This man had sharedwith her something profoundly intimate. And, thanking Mr Ramsay forit and Mrs Ramsay for it and the hour and the place, crediting the worldwith a power which she had not suspected—that one could walk away down that long gallery not alone any more but arm in arm with somebody—the strangest feeling in the world, and the most exhilarating—shenicked the catch of her paint-box to, more firmly than was necessary, andthe nick seemed to surround in a circle forever the paint-box, the lawn,Mr Bankes, and that wild villain, Cam, dashing past.