Then, she remembered, she had laid her head on Mrs Ramsay's lap andlaughed

　　Oh, but, Lily would say, there was her father; her home; even, had shedared to say it, her painting. But all this seemed so little, so virginal,against the other. Yet, as the night wore on, and white lights parted thecurtains, and even now and then some bird chirped in the garden, gatheringa desperate courage she would urge her own exemption from theuniversal law; plead for it; she liked to be alone; she liked to be herself;she was not made for that; and so have to meet a serious stare from eyesof unparalleled depth, and confront Mrs Ramsay's simple certainty (andshe was childlike now) that her dear Lily, her little Brisk, was a fool.
　　Then, she remembered, she had laid her head on Mrs Ramsay's lap andlaughed and laughed and laughed, laughed almost hysterically at thethought of Mrs Ramsay presiding with immutable calm over destinieswhich she completely failed to understand. There she sat, simple, serious.
　　She had recovered her sense of her now—this was the glove's twistedfinger. But into what sanctuary had one penetrated? Lily Briscoe hadlooked up at last, and there was Mrs Ramsay, unwitting entirely whathad caused her laughter, still presiding, but now with every trace of wilfulnessabolished, and in its stead, something clear as the space whichthe clouds at last uncover—the little space of sky which sleeps beside themoon.
　　Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Was it, once more, the deceptivenessof beauty, so that all one's perceptions, half way to truth, weretangled in a golden mesh? or did she lock up within her some secretwhich certainly Lily Briscoe believed people must have for the world togo on at all? Every one could not be as helter skelter, hand to mouth asshe was. But if they knew, could they tell one what they knew? Sitting onthe floor with her arms round Mrs Ramsay's knees, close as she couldget, smiling to think that Mrs Ramsay would never know the reason ofthat pressure, she imagined how in the chambers of the mind and heartof the woman who was, physically, touching her, were stood, like thetreasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, whichif one could spell them out, would teach one everything, but they wouldnever be offered openly, never made public. What art was there, knownto love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricablythe same, one with the object one adored? Could the bodyachieve, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate passages of thebrain? or the heart? Could loving, as people called it, make her and MrsRamsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptionson tablets, nothing that could be written in any languageknown to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought,leaning her head on Mrs Ramsay's knee.
　　Nothing happened. Nothing! Nothing! as she leant her head againstMrs Ramsay's knee. And yet, she knew knowledge and wisdom werestored up in Mrs Ramsay's heart. How, then, she had asked herself, didone know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were?
　　Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangibleto touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged thewastes of the air over the countries of the world alone, and then hauntedthe hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives, which werepeople. Mrs Ramsay rose. Lily rose. Mrs Ramsay went. For days therehung about her, as after a dream some subtle change is felt in the personone has dreamt of, more vividly than anything she said, the sound ofmurmuring and, as she sat in the wicker arm-chair in the drawing-roomwindow she wore, to Lily's eyes, an august shape; the shape of a dome.
　　This ray passed level with Mr Bankes's ray straight to Mrs Ramsay sittingreading there with James at her knee. But now while she still looked,Mr Bankes had done. He had put on his spectacles. He had stepped back.