It was all over for her. The sheet was stretched and the bed
narrow. She had gone up into the tower alone and left them
blackberrying in the sun. The door had shut, and there among the dust of fallen
plaster and the litter of birds’ nests how distant the view had
looked, and the sounds came thin and chill (once on Leith Hill, she
remembered), and Richard, Richard! she cried, as a sleeper in the
night starts and stretches a hand in the dark for help. Lunching with
Lady Bruton, it came back to her. He has
left me; I am alone for ever, she thought, folding her hands upon her
knee.
Peter Walsh had got up and crossed to the window and stood with his back to her, flicking a bandanna handkerchief from side to side. Masterly and dry and desolate he looked, his thin shoulder-blades lifting his coat slightly; blowing his nose violently. Take me with you, Clarissa thought impulsively, as if he were starting directly upon some great voyage; and then, next moment, it was if the five acts of a play that had been very exciting and moving were now over and she had lived a lifetime in them and had run away, had lived with Peter, and it was now over.