"All one's faculties have their play," said Richard. "I may be treading
on dangerous ground; but what I feel about poets and artists in general
is this: on your own lines, you can't be beaten--granted; but off your
own lines--puff--one has to make allowances. Now, I shouldn't like to
think that any one had to make allowances for me."

"I don't quite agree, Richard," said Mrs. Dalloway. "Think of Shelley. I
feel that there's almost everything one wants in 'Adonais.'"

"Read 'Adonais' by all means," Richard conceded. "But whenever I hear
of Shelley I repeat to myself the words of Matthew Arnold, 'What a set!
What a set!'"

This roused Ridley's attention. "Matthew Arnold? A detestable prig!" he
snapped.

"A prig--granted," said Richard; "but, I think a man of the world.
That's where my point comes in. We politicians doubtless seem to you"
(he grasped somehow that Helen was the representative of the arts)
"a gross commonplace set of people; but we see both sides; we may be
clumsy, but we do our best to get a grasp of things. Now your artists
_find_ things in a mess, shrug their shoulders, turn aside to their
visions--which I grant may be very beautiful--and _leave_ things in a
mess. Now that seems to me evading one's responsibilities. Besides, we
aren't all born with the artistic faculty."

"It's dreadful," said Mrs. Dalloway, who, while her husband spoke, had
been thinking. "When I'm with artists I feel so intensely the delights
of shutting oneself up in a little world of one's own, with pictures and
music and everything beautiful, and then I go out into the streets and
the first child I meet with its poor, hungry, dirty little face makes me
turn round and say, 'No, I _can't_ shut myself up--I _won't_ live in a
world of my own. I should like to stop all the painting and writing and
music until this kind of thing exists no longer.' Don't you feel," she
wound up, addressing Helen, "that life's a perpetual conflict?" Helen
considered for a moment. "No," she said. "I don't think I do."

There was a pause, which was decidedly uncomfortable. Mrs. Dalloway then
gave a little shiver, and asked whether she might have her fur cloak
brought to her. As she adjusted the soft brown fur about her neck a
fresh topic struck her.

"I own," she said, "that I shall never forget the _Antigone_. I saw it
at Cambridge years ago, and it's haunted me ever since. Don't you think
it's quite the most modern thing you ever saw?" she asked Ri