Full text: Mrs. Dalloway

MRS. DALLOWAY 
conditions (for one must be scientific, above all scienti- 
fic) can quicken trees into life! Happily Rezia put her 
hand with a tremendous weight on his knee so that he 
was weighted down, transfixed, or the excitement of the 
elm trees rising and falling, rising and falling with all 
their leaves alight and the colour thinning and thicken- 
ing from blue to the green of a hollow wave, like 
plumes on horses’ heads, feathers on ladies’, so proudly 
they rose and fell, so superbly, would have sent him 
mad. But he would not go mad. He would shut his 
eyes; he would see no more. 
But they beckoned; leaves were alive; trees were 
alive. And the leaves being connected by millions of 
fibres with his own body, there on the seat, fanned it 
up and down; when the branch stretched he, too, 
made that statement. The sparrows fluttering, rising, 
and falling in jagged fountains were part of the pattern; 
the white and blue, barred with black branches. 
Sounds made harmonies with premeditation; the 
spaces between them were as significant as the sounds. 
A child cried. Rightly far away a horn sounded. All 
taken together meant the birth of a new religion—— 
“Septimus!” said Rezia. He started violently. 
People must notice. 
“I am going to walk to the fountain and back,” she 
said. 
For she could stand it no longer. Dr. Holmes might 
say there was nothing the matter. Far rather would 
she that he were dead! She could not sit beside him 
when he stared so and did not see her and made every- 
thing terrible; sky and tree, children playing, dragging 
carts, blowing whistles, falling down; all were terrible. 
And he would not kill himself; and she could tell no 
one. “Septimus has been working too hard”’—that was 
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