Mrs. Dalloway

At Regent’s Park, Peter observes a little girl as she runs into the legs of a woman. The woman is Rezia Smith, who helps the little girl up while she thinks about her deeply-troubled husband, whom she has left alone “to say hard, cruel, wicked things, to talk to himself, to talk to a dead man, on the seat over there” (60). Rezia engages in a debate with herself, angry one moment at her situation and brave in the next, reminding herself that “[e]very one gives up something when they marry” (60). She remembers Septimus in the early days of his decline, and the inability of Dr. Holmes to help Septimus, and soon she “ha[s] taken off her wedding ring” (62) for fear of losing it off her thin finger. Meanwhile, Septimus “lay[s] resting, waiting, before he again interpreted, with effort, with agony, to mankind” (63). With effort, he sees the park in front of him, observing that “[b]eauty was everywhere” (64). Septimus speaks out loud to a dead man named Evans, seeing a vision of “[a] man in gray […] but no mud was on him; no wounds; he was not changed” (64).

Peter observes Septimus and Rezia engaged in a difficult-looking conversation and reflects, “that is being young […] to have an awful scene—the poor girl looked absolutely desperate—in the middle of the morning” (65).