He had seen a glass dressing table go up the stairs — Mrs. Ramsay’s new dressing table. He said to Rose, “I never saw the like of it. I think she must have gone to fairyland to find it. It was in a big wooden box out on the lawn in front of the house, and the two men who had brought it began to take it out of its box. They walked all around the box, looking at it and tapping it before they found the right place where they would begin to open it. They didn’t take the top off the box and lift the table out, they took the box away from the table a bit at a time. First they took the top off and laid it on the grass and then they pried the sides off, and the way they worked at it you’d think they were afraid of it. Then the table was out in the open and they cut away the paper it was wrapped in and you should have seen it there, all glass with the sun shining down on it. She has an arch there over the path, covered with roses, and the table caught the roses and made the most of them. A looking-glass table, that’s what it is. Mrs. Ramsay will be able to see all around herself but I wish you could have seen the way the roses looked in it. It sparkled in the sun and all the roses sparkled. It made a fairyland out of the garden. I felt that I was dreaming. I looked up. The sky was blue. It was a lovely day. Rose, you should have been there. I was standing in the drawing room, no curtains on the windows and no carpet on the floor yet, all bare, but I like the wood under my feet, the bare wood — the floors are lovely in that house — and I was looking through the window at the table standing there in the sun and I was thinking about you and making wishes for you. I was wishing … I don’t know what I didn’t wish for. Then they picked the table up and began carrying it into the house. They set it down for a minute in the hall and it looked as if the sun was still shining on it. Then they began carrying it up the stairs. They watched each other’s feet and they never spoke a word all the time they were going up the stairs and they went very slowly, one step at a time. The table tilted a bit and I could see myself in it, all different ways. There is a prism in the Protestant Library — I will take you there to see it. I won’t tell you what it is — it is called a prism, prism — and then you won’t know what to expect and you will be surprised. And Mrs. Ramsay has a big diamond that she wears on her marriage finger. There are a lot of things that catch the light. I watched myself all the way up the stairs. That is a very big enormous square hall she has there, with as many windows in it as if it was a room, but I was standing as quiet as if the table depended on me as much as on the two that were carrying it, and I began to feel as if I was at the bottom of a well watching myself go away from myself. I was standing there looking up. It is very funny to see yourself looking up the stairs. I suppose that is the way we appear to God — always looking up when we want something. Then they got up on the landing and the table went away out of my sight. I suppose I won’t see it again.”