She had looked
from Mrs. Dalloway to Mr. Dalloway, and from Mr. Dalloway back again.
Clarissa, indeed, was a fascinating spectacle. She wore a white dress
and a long glittering necklace. What with her clothes, and her arch
delicate face, which showed exquisitely pink beneath hair turning grey,
she was astonishingly like an eighteenth-century masterpiece--a Reynolds
or a Romney. She made Helen and the others look coarse and slovenly
beside her. Sitting lightly upright she seemed to be dealing with the
world as she chose; the enormous solid globe spun round this way and
that beneath her fingers. And her husband! Mr. Dalloway rolling that
rich deliberate voice was even more impressive. He seemed to come from
the humming oily centre of the machine where the polished rods are
sliding, and the pistons thumping; he grasped things so firmly but so
loosely; he made the others appear like old maids cheapening remnants.
Rachel followed in the wake of the matrons, as if in a trance; a curious
scent of violets came back from Mrs. Dalloway, mingling with the soft
rustling of her skirts, and the tinkling of her chains. As she followed,
Rachel thought with supreme self-abasement, taking in the whole course
of her life and the lives of all her friends, "She said we lived in a
world of our own. It's true. We're perfectly absurd."
"We sit in here," said Helen, opening the door of the saloon.
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