We politicians doubtless seem to you" (he grasped somehow that Helen was the representative of the arts) "a gross commonplace set of people; but we see both sides; we may be clumsy, but we do our best to get a grasp of things.

Now your artists _find_ things in a mess, shrug their shoulders, turn aside to their visions--which I grant may be very beautiful--and _leave_ things in a mess.

Now that seems to me evading one's responsibilities.

Besides, we aren't all born with the artistic faculty." "It's dreadful," said Mrs.Dalloway, who, while her husband spoke, had been thinking.

"When I'm with artists I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one's own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful, and then I go out into the streets and the first child I meet with its poor, hungry, dirty little face makes me turn round and say, 'No, I _can't_ shut myself up--I _won't_ live in a world of my own.