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he preferred dining alone. All those interruptions annoyed him. Well, thought William Bankes,
preserving a demeanour of exquisite courtesy and merely spreading the fingers of his left hand on
the table-cloth as a mechanic examines a tool beautifully polished and ready for use in an interval
of leisure, such are the sacrifices one's friends ask of one. It would have hurt her if he had refused
to come. But it was not worth it for him. Looking at his hand he thought that if he had been alone
dinner would have been almost over now; he would have been free to work. Yes, he thought, it is a
terrible waste of time. The children were dropping in still. "I wish one of you would run up to
Roger's room," Mrs Ramsay was saying. How trifling it all is, how boring it all is, he thought,
compared with the other thing-- work. Here he sat drumming his fingers on the table-cloth when he
might have been--he took a flashing bird's-eye view of his work. What a waste of time it all was to
be sure! Yet, he thought, she is one of my oldest friends. I am by way of being devoted to her. Yet
now, at this moment her presence meant absolutely nothing to him: her beauty meant nothing to
him; her sitting with her little boy at the window-- nothing, nothing. He wished only to be alone
and to take up that book. He felt uncomfortable; he felt treacherous, that he could sit by her side
and feel nothing for her. The truth was that he did not enjoy family life. It was in this sort of state
that one asked oneself, What does one live for? Why, one asked oneself, does one take all these
pains for the human race to go on? Is it so very desirable? Are we attractive as a species? Not so
very, he thought, looking at those he supposed. Foolish questions, vain questions, questions one
never asked if one was occupied. Is human life this? Is human life that? One never had time to
think about it. But here he was asking himself that sort of question, because Mrs Ramsay was
giving orders to servants, and also because it had struck him, thinking how surprised Mrs Ramsay
was that Carrie Manning should still exist, that friendships, even the best of them, are frail things.
One drifts apart. He reproached himself again. He was sitting beside Mrs Ramsay and he had
nothing in the world to say to her.
"I'm so sorry," said Mrs Ramsy, turning to him at last. He felt rigid and barren, like a pair of
boots that have been soaked and gone dry so that you can hardly force your feet into them. Yet he
must force his feet into them. He must make himself talk. Unless he were very careful, she would
find out this treachery of his; that he did not care a straw for her, and that would not be at all
pleasant, he thought. So he bent his head courteously in her direction.
"How you must detest dining in this bear garden," she said, making use, as she did when she
was distracted, of her social manner. So, when there is a strife of tongues, at some meeting, the
chairman, to obtain unity, suggests that every one shall speak in French. Perhaps it is bad French;
French may not contain the words that express the speaker's thoughts; nevertheless speaking French
imposes some order, some uniformity. Replying to her in the same language, Mr Bankes said, "No,
not at all," and Mr Tansley, who had no knowledge of this language, even spoke thus in words of
one syllable, at once suspected its insincerity. They did talk nonsense, he thought, the Ramsays; and
he pounced on this fresh instance with joy, making a note which, one of these days, he would read
aloud, to one or two friends. There, in a society where one could say what one liked he would
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sarcastically describe "staying with the Ramsays" and what nonsense they talked. It was worth
while doing it once, he would say; but not again. The women bored one so, he would say. Of course
Ramsay had dished himself by marrying a beautiful woman and having eight children. It would
shape itself something like that, but now, at this moment, sitting stuck there with an empty seat
beside him, nothing had shaped itself at all. It was all in scraps and fragments. He felt extremely,
even physically, uncomfortable. He wanted somebody to give him a chance of asserting himself.
He wanted it so urgently that he fidgeted in his chair, looked at this person, then at that person, tried
to break into their talk, opened his mouth and shut it again. They were talking about the fishing
industry. Why did no one ask him his opinion? What did they know about the fishing industry?
Lily Briscoe knew all that. Sitting opposite him, could she not see, as in an X-ray photograph,
the ribs and thigh bones of the young man's desire to impress himself, lying dark in the mist of his
flesh--that thin mist which convention had laid over his burning desire to break into the
conversation? But, she thought, screwing up her Chinese eyes, and remembering how he sneered at
women, "can't paint, can't write," why should I help him to relieve himself?
There is a code of behaviour, she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions
of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever her own occupation might be, to go to the help of the
young man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his
urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness,
to help us, suppose the Tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect
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