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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