like Mrs. Dalloway too?" she asked.

As she spoke she saw Rachel redden; for she remembered silly things she
had said, and also, it occurred to her that she treated this exquisite
woman rather badly, for Mrs. Dalloway had said that she loved her
husband.

"She was quite nice, but a thimble-pated creature," Helen continued. "I
never heard such nonsense! Chitter-chatter-chitter-chatter--fish and
the Greek alphabet--never listened to a word any one said--chock-full of
idiotic theories about the way to bring up children--I'd far rather talk
to him any day. He was pompous, but he did at least understand what was
said to him."

The glamour insensibly faded a little both from Richard and Clarissa.
They had not been so wonderful after all, then, in the eyes of a mature
person.

"It's very difficult to know what people are like," Rachel remarked, and
Helen saw with pleasure that she spoke more naturally. "I suppose I was
taken in."

There was little doubt about that according to Helen, but she restrained
herself and said aloud:

"One has to make experiments."

"And they _were_ nice," said Rachel. "They were extraordinarily
interesting." She tried to recall the image of the world as a live
thing that Richard had given her, with drains like nerves, and
bad houses like patches of diseased skin. She recalled his
watch-words--Unity--Imagination, and saw again the bubbles meeting in
her tea-cup as he spoke of sisters and canaries, boyhood and his father,
her small world becoming wonderfully enlarged.

"But all people don't seem to you equally interesting, do they?" asked
Mrs. Ambrose.

Rachel explained that most people had hitherto been symbols; but that
when they talked to one they ceased to be symbols, and became--"I could
listen to them for ever!" she exclaimed. She then jumped up, disappeared
downstairs for a minute, and came back with a fat red book.

"_Who's_ _Who_," she said, laying it upon Helen's knee and turning the
pages. "It gives short lives of people--for instance: 'Sir Roland Beal;
born 1852; parents from Moffatt; educated at Rugby; passed first
into R.E.; married 1878 the daughter of T. Fishwick; served in the
Bechuanaland Expedition 1884-85 (honourably mentioned). Clubs: United
Service, Naval and Military. Recreations: an enthusiastic curler.'"

Sitting on the deck at Helen's feet she went on turning the pages and
reading biographies of bankers, writers, clergymen, sailors, surgeons,
judges, professors