MRS. DALLOWAY
ing lakes and the sky. Just a few fairy lamps, Clarissa
Dalloway had said, in the back garden! But she was a
magician! It was a park. . . . And she didn’t know
their names, but friends she knew they were, friends
without names, songs without words, always the best.
But there were so many doors, such unexpected places,
she could not find her way.
“Old Mrs. Hilbery,” said Peter; but who was that?
that lady standing by the curtain all the evening, without
 speaking? He knew her face; connected her with
Bourton. Surely she used to cut up underclothes at the
large table in the window? Davidson, was that her name?
“Oh, that is Ellie Henderson,” said Sally. Clarissa
was really very hard on her. She was a cousin, very
poor. Clarissa was hard on people.
She was rather, said Peter. Yet, said Sally, in her
emotional way, with a rush of that enthusiasm which
Peter used to love her for, yet dreaded a little now, so
effusive she might become—how generous to her friends
Clarissa was! and what a rare quality one found it, and
how sometimes at night or on Christmas Day, when she
counted up her blessings, she put that friendship first.
They were young; that was it. Clarissa was purehearted;
 that was it. Peter would think her sentimental.
So she was. For she had come to feel that it was the
only thing worth saying—what one felt. Cleverness was
silly. One must say simply what one felt.
“But I do not know,” said Peter Walsh, “what I feel.”
Poor Peter, thought Sally. Why did not Clarissa
come and talk to them? That was what he was longing
for. She knew it. All the time he was thinking only of
Clarissa, and was fidgetting with his knife.
He had not found life simple, Peter said. His relations
 with Clarissa had not been simple. It had spoilt

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