Yet, though she is perfectly right, her voice, being the voice of
the hostess, is reluctant to inflict its individuality. Some grief
for the past holds it back; some concern for the present.
It is half-past eleven, she says, and the sound of St. Margaret’s
glides into the recesses of the heart and buries itself in ring after
ring of sound, like something alive which wants to confide itself, to
disperse itself, to be, with a tremor of delight, at rest-like
Clarissa herself, thought Peter Walsh, coming down the stairs on the
stroke of the hour in white. It is Clarissa herself, he thought, with
a deep emotion, and an extraordinarily clear, yet puzzling,
recollection of her, as if this bell had come into the room years
ago, where they sat at some moment of great intimacy, and had gone
from one to the other and had left, like a bee with honey, laden with
the moment. But what room? What moment? And why had he been so
profoundly happy when the clock was striking? Then, as the sound of
St. Margaret’s languished, he thought, She has been ill, and the
sound expressed languor and suffering. It was her heart, he
remembered; and the sudden loudness of the final stroke tolled for
death that surprised in the midst of life, Clarissa falling where she
stood, in her drawing-room. No! No! he cried. She is not dead! I am
not old, he cried, and marched up Whitehall as if there rolled down
to him, vigorous, unending, his future.