Mrs. Dalloway

Walsh laughed out.

But Lucrezia Warren Smith was saying to herself, It’s wicked; why
should I suffer? she was asking, as she walked down the broad path. No;
I can’t stand it any longer, she was saying, having left Septimus, who
wasn’t Septimus any longer, to say hard, cruel, wicked things, to talk
to himself, to talk to a dead man, on the seat over there; when the
child ran full tilt into her, fell flat, and burst out crying.

That was comforting rather. She stood her upright, dusted her frock,
kissed her.

But for herself she had done nothing wrong; she had loved Septimus; she
had been happy; she had had a beautiful home, and there her sisters
lived still, making hats. Why should _she_ suffer?

The child ran straight back to its nurse, and Rezia saw her scolded,
comforted, taken up by the nurse who put down her knitting, and the
kind-looking man gave her his watch to blow open to comfort her--but
why should _she_ be exposed? Why not left in Milan? Why tortured? Why?

Slightly waved by tears the broad path, the nurse, the man in grey,
the perambulator, rose and fell before her eyes. To be rocked by this
malignant torturer was her lot. But why? She was like a bird sheltering