There was always something cold in Clarissa, he thought. (Still the last tremors of the great booming voice shook the air round him the half-hour still early only half-past eleven still.) For he understood young people he liked them. Why not 'Here's Elizabeth' simply? It was insincere. The way she said 'Here is my Elizabeth!'-that annoyed him. Clarissa had grown hard, he thought and a trifle sentimental into the bargain, he suspected, looking at the great motor-cars capable of doing-how many miles on how many gallons? For he had a turn for mechanics had invented a plough in his district, had ordered wheel-barrows from England, but the coolies wouldn't use them, all of which Clarissa knew nothing whatever about. All India lay behind him plains, mountains epidemics of cholera a district twice as big as Ireland decisions he had come to alone-he, Peter Walsh who was now really for the first time in his life, in love.

And there he was, this fortunate man, himself, reflected in the plate-glass window of a motor-car manufacturer in Victoria Street. Only one person in the world could be as he was, in love. Not that he blamed her or this effigy of a man in a tail-coat with a carnation in his buttonhole coming towards him. Why does she give these parties, he thought.

(The leaden circles dissolved in the air.) Oh these parties, he thought Clarissa's parties. Remember my party, remember my party, said Peter Walsh as he stepped down the street, speaking to himself rhythmically, in time with the flow of the sound, the direct downright sound of Big Ben striking the half-hour.

Mrs dalloway sparknotes