Mrs. Dalloway

Then, while a seedy-looking nondescript man carrying a leather bag
stood on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and hesitated, for within
was what balm, how great a welcome, how many tombs with banners waving
over them, tokens of victories not over armies, but over, he thought,
that plaguy spirit of truth seeking which leaves me at present without
a situation, and more than that, the cathedral offers company, he
thought, invites you to membership of a society; great men belong to
it; martyrs have died for it; why not enter in, he thought, put this
leather bag stuffed with pamphlets before an altar, a cross, the
symbol of something which has soared beyond seeking and questing and
knocking of words together and has become all spirit, disembodied,
ghostly--why not enter in? he thought and while he hesitated out flew
the aeroplane over Ludgate Circus.

It was strange; it was still. Not a sound was to be heard above the
traffic. Unguided it seemed; sped of its own free will. And now,
curving up and up, straight up, like something mounting in ecstasy, in
pure delight, out from behind poured white smoke looping, writing a T,
an O, an F.

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