felt Mrs. Gardner's silence
as a challenge.

"I wonder" (Mrs. Eliott was always wondering) "what becomes of our ideals
when we've realised them."

The doctor answered. "My dear lady, they cease to be ideals, and we have
to get some more."

Mrs. Eliott, in her turn, was received into the cloud.

"Of course," said Mrs. Pooley, emerging from it joyously, "we must have
them."

"Of course," said Mrs. Eliott vaguely, as her spirit struggled with the
cloud.

"Of course," said Dr. Gardner. He was careful to array himself for
tea-parties in all his innocent metaphysical vanities, to scatter
profundities like epigrams, to flatter the pure intellects of ladies,
while the solemn vagueness of his manner concealed from them the
innermost frivolity of his thought. He didn't care whether they
understood him or not. He knew his wife did. Her wedded spirit moved
in secret and unsuspected harmony with his.

He had a certain liking for Mrs. Eliott. She seemed to him an apparition
mainly pathetic. With her attenuated distinction, her hectic ardour, her
brilliant and pursuing eye, she had the air of some doomed and dedicated
votress of the pure intellect, haggard, disturbing and disturbed. His
social self was amused with her enthusiasms, but the real Dr. Gardner
accounted for them compassionately. It was no wonder, he considered, that
poor Mrs. Eliott wondered. She had so little else to do. Her nursery
upstairs was empty, it always had been, always would be empty. Did she
wonder at that too, at the transcendental carelessness that had left her
thus frustrated, thus incomplete? Mrs. Eliott would have been scandalised
if she had known the real Dr. Gardner's opinion of her.

"I wonder," said she, "what will become of Anne's ideal."

"It's safe," said the doctor. "She hasn't realised it."

"I wonder, then, what will become of Anne."

Mrs. Pooley retreated altogether before this gross application of
transcendent truth. She had not come to Mrs. Eliott's to talk about
Mrs. Majendie.

Dr. Gardner smiled. "Oh, come," he said, "you _are_ personal."

"I'm not," said Mrs. Eliott, conscious of her lapse and ashamed of it.
"But, after all, Anne's my friend. I know people blamed me because I
never told her. How could I tell her?"

"No," said Mrs. Gardner soothingly, "how could you?"

"Anne," continued Mrs. Eliott, "was so reticent. The thing was all
settled before anybody could say a word."

"Well," said Dr. Gardner, "there's no good