Mrs. Dalloway

to cry.

Love destroyed too. Everything that was fine, everything that was true
went. Take Peter Walsh now. There was a man, charming, clever, with
ideas about everything. If you wanted to know about Pope, say, or
Addison, or just to talk nonsense, what people were like, what things
meant, Peter knew better than any one. It was Peter who had helped her;
Peter who had lent her books. But look at the women he loved--vulgar,
trivial, commonplace. Think of Peter in love--he came to see her after
all these years, and what did he talk about? Himself. Horrible passion!
she thought. Degrading passion! she thought, thinking of Kilman and her
Elizabeth walking to the Army and Navy Stores.

Big Ben struck the half-hour.

How extraordinary it was, strange, yes, touching, to see the old lady
(they had been neighbours ever so many years) move away from the
window, as if she were attached to that sound, that string. Gigantic as
it was, it had something to do with her. Down, down, into the midst
of ordinary things the finger fell making the moment solemn. She was
forced, so Clarissa imagined, by that sound, to move, to go--but where?
Clarissa tried to follow her as she turned and disappeared, and could