Mrs. Dalloway

independence, one’s self-respect--something, after all, priceless.

He returned with a pillow and a quilt.

“An hour’s complete rest after luncheon,” he said. And he went.

How like him! He would go on saying “An hour’s complete rest after
luncheon” to the end of time, because a doctor had ordered it once.
It was like him to take what doctors said literally; part of his
adorable, divine simplicity, which no one had to the same extent;
which made him go and do the thing while she and Peter frittered
their time away bickering. He was already half-way to the House of
Commons, to his Armenians, his Albanians, having settled her on the
sofa, looking at his roses. And people would say, “Clarissa Dalloway
is spoilt.” She cared much more for her roses than for the Armenians.
Hunted out of existence, maimed, frozen, the victims of cruelty and
injustice (she had heard Richard say so over and over again)--no, she
could feel nothing for the Albanians, or was it the Armenians? but she
loved her roses (didn’t that help the Armenians?)--the only flowers
she could bear to see cut. But Richard was already at the House of
Commons; at his Committee, having settled all her difficulties. But