Jefferson Lawrence was alone at the small, perfectly appointed table by the window looking out over the river. He had dinner and sat there over his coffee watching the winding pattern of traffic as it crossed the bridge and spread out like a serpent with two heads. Open beside him was Mrs. Dalloway. He thought how this dainty, fragile older woman threading her way through the streets of Westminster on a day in June, enjoying the flowers in the shops, the greetings from old friends, but never really drawing a deep, passionate breath, was so like himself. He, and Mrs. Dalloway, too, had never permitted themselves the luxury of joys that dug into the bone marrow of the spirit.

He had not because he was both poor and ambitious. Poverty imposes a kind of chastity on the ambitious. They cannot stop to grasp and embrace and sit in the back seat of cars along a dark country lane. No, they must look the other way and climb one more painful step up the ladder. He made the decision with his eyes open, or so he thought. At any cost, he must leave the dreary Pennsylvania mining town where his father was a pharmacist. And so he had, so he had. At State College, he had no time to walk among the violets on the water's edge. From his room he could look out in springtime and see the couples hand in hand walking slowly, deliciously, across the campus, and he could smell the sweet vernal winds. He was not stone. He was not unmoved. He had to teach himself patiently that these traps were not for him. He must mentally pull the blinds and close the window, so that all that existed was in the books before him. At law school, the same. More of this stamping down of human emotion as a young lawyer in New York. By the time he was prosperous enough -- his goals were high -- he was bald and afraid of women. The only one who would have him was his cripple, the strange unhappy woman who became his wife. Perhaps it was right; perhaps it was just. He had dared to defy nature, to turn his back to the Lorelei, and he was punished. Like Mrs. Dalloway, with her regrets about Peter Walsh, he had his moments of melancholy over a youth too well spent. If he had had a son, he would tell him, ``Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. This same flower that smiles today tomorrow will be dying.'' But then his son could afford it.