“Will you take me, Mr. Tansley?” said Lily, quickly, kindly, for, of course, if Mrs. Ramsay said to her, as in effect she did, “I am drowning, my dear, in seas of fire. Unless you apply some balm to the anguish of this hour and say something nice to that young man there, life will run upon the rocks⁠—indeed I hear the grating and the growling at this minute. My nerves are taut as fiddle strings. Another touch and they will snap”⁠—when Mrs. Ramsay said all this, as the glance in her eyes said it, of course for the hundred and fiftieth time Lily Briscoe had to renounce the experiment⁠—what happens if one is not nice to that young man there⁠—and be nice.