lifted her head sharply,
exclaiming aloud, "It's intolerable!" Looking out of the window with
eyes that would have seen nothing even had they not been dazed by tears,
she indulged herself at last in violent abuse of the entire day. It had
been miserable from start to finish; first, the service in the chapel;
then luncheon; then Evelyn; then Miss Allan; then old Mrs. Paley
blocking up the passage. All day long she had been tantalized and put
off. She had now reached one of those eminences, the result of
some crisis, from which the world is finally displayed in its
true proportions. She disliked the look of it immensely--churches,
politicians, misfits, and huge impostures--men like Mr. Dalloway,
men like Mr. Bax, Evelyn and her chatter, Mrs. Paley blocking up the
passage. Meanwhile the steady beat of her own pulse represented the hot
current of feeling that ran down beneath; beating, struggling, fretting.
For the time, her own body was the source of all the life in the world,
which tried to burst forth here--there--and was repressed now by Mr.
Bax, now by Evelyn, now by the imposition of ponderous stupidity, the
weight of the entire world. Thus tormented, she would twist her hands
together, for all things were wrong, all people stupid. Vaguely seeing
that there were people down in the garden beneath she represented them
as aimless masses of matter, floating hither and thither, without aim
except to impede her. What were they doing, those other people in the
world?

"Nobody knows," she said. The force of her rage was beginning to spend
itself, and the vision of the world which had been so vivid became dim.

"It's a dream," she murmured. She considered the rusty inkstand,
the pen, the ash-tray, and the old French newspaper. These small and
worthless objects seemed to her to represent human lives.

"We're asleep and dreaming," she repeated. But the possibility which now
suggested itself that one of the shapes might be the shape of Terence
roused her from her melancholy lethargy. She became as restless as she
had been before she sat down. She was no longer able to see the world
as a town laid out beneath her. It was covered instead by a haze of
feverish red mist. She had returned to the state in which she had been
all day. Thinking was no escape. Physical movement was the only refuge,
in and out of rooms, in and out of people's minds, seeking she knew not
what. Therefore she rose, pushed back the table, and went downstairs