The action spans one June day in London in 1923 but travels much further in time and space through the minds of Clarissa Dalloway, her husband, Richard and Peter Walsh who has just returned from India (and whom she rejected years ago to marry Richard) through the minds also of others whose lives brush against theirs Sally Seton, an old friend, Miss Kilman, who has 'seen the light' and teaches history to young Elizabeth Dalloway with sinister serenity and sad, shell-shocked young Septimus and his little Italian wife