Mrs. Dalloway

was dead now; and her chills never went to her chest, never. It was
the girls she thought of, the young girls with their bare shoulders,
she herself having always been a wisp of a creature, with her thin
hair and meagre profile; though now, past fifty, there was beginning
to shine through some mild beam, something purified into distinction
by years of self-abnegation but obscured again, perpetually, by her
distressing gentility, her panic fear, which arose from three hundred
pounds’ income, and her weaponless state (she could not earn a penny)
and it made her timid, and more and more disqualified year by year to
meet well-dressed people who did this sort of thing every night of
the season, merely telling their maids “I’ll wear so and so,” whereas
Ellie Henderson ran out nervously and bought cheap pink flowers, half
a dozen, and then threw a shawl over her old black dress. For her
invitation to Clarissa’s party had come at the last moment. She was not
quite happy about it. She had a sort of feeling that Clarissa had not
meant to ask her this year.

Why should she? There was no reason really, except that they had always
known each other. Indeed, they were cousins. But naturally they had