Mrs. Dalloway

he remembered; and the sudden loudness of the final stroke tolled for
death that surprised in the midst of life, Clarissa falling where she
stood, in her drawing-room. No! No! he cried. She is not dead! I am not
old, he cried, and marched up Whitehall, as if there rolled down to
him, vigorous, unending, his future.

He was not old, or set, or dried in the least. As for caring what they
said of him--the Dalloways, the Whitbreads, and their set, he cared not
a straw--not a straw (though it was true he would have, some time or
other, to see whether Richard couldn’t help him to some job). Striding,
staring, he glared at the statue of the Duke of Cambridge. He had been
sent down from Oxford--true. He had been a Socialist, in some sense a
failure--true. Still the future of civilisation lies, he thought, in
the hands of young men like that; of young men such as he was, thirty
years ago; with their love of abstract principles; getting books sent
out to them all the way from London to a peak in the Himalayas;
reading science; reading philosophy. The future lies in the hands of
young men like that, he thought.

A patter like the patter of leaves in a wood came from behind, and with