Mrs. Dalloway

the women stand knitting and the men dig in the garden, the evening
seems ominous; the figures still; as if some august fate, known to
them, awaited without fear, were about to sweep them into complete
annihilation.

Indoors among ordinary things, the cupboard, the table, the window-sill
with its geraniums, suddenly the outline of the landlady, bending to
remove the cloth, becomes soft with light, an adorable emblem which
only the recollection of cold human contacts forbids us to embrace. She
takes the marmalade; she shuts it in the cupboard.

“There is nothing more to-night, sir?”

But to whom does the solitary traveller make reply?

       *       *       *       *       *

So the elderly nurse knitted over the sleeping baby in Regent’s Park.
So Peter Walsh snored.

He woke with extreme suddenness, saying to himself, “The death of the
soul.”

“Lord, Lord!” he said to himself out loud, stretching and opening his
eyes. “The death of the soul.” The words attached themselves to some
scene, to some room, to some past he had been dreaming of. It became
clearer; the scene, the room, the past he had been dreaming of.

It was at Bourton that summer, early in the ’nineties, when he was so