Mrs. Dalloway

dryer, perhaps, but he looks awfully well, and just the same.

“How heavenly it is to see you again!” she exclaimed. He had his knife
out. That’s so like him, she thought.

He had only reached town last night, he said; would have to go
down into the country at once; and how was everything, how was
everybody--Richard? Elizabeth?

“And what’s all this?” he said, tilting his penknife towards her green
dress.

He’s very well dressed, thought Clarissa; yet he always criticises
_me_.

Here she is mending her dress; mending her dress as usual, he thought;
here she’s been sitting all the time I’ve been in India; mending her
dress; playing about; going to parties; running to the House and back
and all that, he thought, growing more and more irritated, more and
more agitated, for there’s nothing in the world so bad for some women
as marriage, he thought; and politics; and having a Conservative
husband, like the admirable Richard. So it is, so it is, he thought,
shutting his knife with a snap.

“Richard’s very well. Richard’s at a Committee,” said Clarissa.

And she opened her scissors, and said, did he mind her just finishing
what she was doing to her dress, for they had a party that night?