Richard and Clarissa, however, still remained on the borderland. She did not attempt to sit up; her husband stood on his feet, contemplated his waistcoat and trousers, shook his head, and then lay down again. The inside of his brain was still rising and falling like the sea on the stage. At four o’clock he woke from sleep and saw the sunlight make a vivid angle across the red plush curtains and the grey tweed trousers. The ordinary world outside slid into his mind, and by the time he was dressed he was an English gentleman again.
He stood beside his wife. She pulled him down to her by the lapel of his coat, kissed him, and held him fast for a minute.
“Go and get a breath of air, Dick,” she said. “You look quite washed out. . . . How nice you smell! . . . And be polite to that woman. She was so kind to me.”
Thereupon Mrs. Dalloway turned to the cool side of her pillow, terribly flattened but still invincible.
Richard found Helen talking to her brother-in-law, over two dishes of yellow cake and smooth bread and butter.
“You look very ill!” she exclaimed on seeing him. “Come and have some tea.”
He remarked that the hands that moved about the cups were beautiful.
“I hear you’ve been very good to my wife,” he said. “She’s had an awful time of it. You came in and fed her with champagne. Were you among the saved yourself?”
“I? Oh, I haven’t been sick for twenty years—sea-sick, I mean.”
“There are three stages of convalescence, I always say,” broke in the hearty voice of Willoughby. “The milk stage, the bread-and-butter stage, and the roast-beef stage. I should say you were at the bread-and-butter stage.” He handed him the plate.