“But what are you going to do?” she asked him. Oh the lawyers and solicitors, Messrs. Hooper and Grateley of Lincoln’s Inn, they were going to do it, he said. And he actually pared his nails with his pocketknife.
For Heaven’s sake, leave your knife alone! she cried to herself in irrepressible irritation; it was his silly unconventionality, his weakness; his lack of the ghost of a notion what anyone else was feeling that annoyed her, had always annoyed her; and now at his age, how silly!
I know all that, Peter thought; I know what I’m up against, he thought, running his finger along the blade of his knife, Clarissa and Dalloway and all the rest of them; but I’ll show Clarissa—and then to his utter surprise, suddenly thrown by those uncontrollable forces, thrown through the air, he burst into tears; wept; wept without the least shame, sitting on the sofa, the tears running down his cheeks.
And Clarissa had leant forward, taken his hand, drawn him to her, kissed him—actually had felt his face on hers before she could down the brandishing of silver flashing plumes like pampas grass in a tropic gale in her breast, which, subsiding, left her holding his hand, patting his knee and, feeling as she sat back extraordinarily at her ease with him and lighthearted, all in a clap it came over her, If I had married him, this gaiety would have been mine all day!
It was all over for her. The sheet was stretched and the bed narrow. She had gone up into the tower alone and left them blackberrying in the sun. The door had shut, and there among the dust of fallen plaster and the litter of birds’ nests how distant the view had looked, and the sounds came thin and chill (once on Leith Hill, she remembered), and Richard, Richard! she cried, as a sleeper in the night starts and stretches a hand in the dark for help. Lunching with Lady Bruton, it came back to her. He has left me; I am alone forever, she thought, folding her hands upon her knee.