“Anne was always certain of herself.  And since she cares for Mr. Majendie enough to accept him and to accept his sister, and the rather triste life which is all he has to offer her, doesn’t it look as if, probably, she knew her own business best?”

“I think,” said Mr. Eliott firmly, “we may take it that she does.”

Miss Proctor’s departure was felt as a great liberation of the intellect.

Mrs. Pooley sat up in her corner and revived the conversation interrupted by Miss Proctor.  Mrs. Pooley had felt that to talk about Mrs. Majendie was to waste Mrs. Eliott.  Mrs. Majendie apart, Mrs. Pooley had many ideas in common with her friend; but, whereas Mrs. Eliott would spend superbly on one idea at a time, Mrs. Pooley’s intellect entertained promiscuously and beyond its means.  It was inclined to be hospitable to ideas that had never met outside it, whose encounter was a little distressing to everybody concerned.  Whenever this happened Mrs. Pooley would appeal to Mr. Eliott, and Mr. Eliott would say, “Don’t ask me.  I’m a stupid fellow.  Don’t ask me to decide anything.”

Thus did Mr. Eliott wilfully obscure himself.

To-day he was more impregnably concealed than ever.  He hadn’t any opinions of his own.  They were too expensive.  He borrowed other people’s when he wanted them.  “But,” said Mr. Eliott, “it is very seldom that I do want an opinion.  If you have any facts to give me—­well and good.”  For he knew that, at the mention of facts, Mrs. Pooley’s intellect would retreat behind a cloud and that his wife would pursue it there.

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Eliott, “there’s such a thing as realising your ideals.”

Her eyes gleamed and wandered and rested upon Mrs. Gardner.  Mrs. Gardner had a singularly beautiful intellect which she was known to be shy of displaying.  People said that Dr. Gardner had fallen in love with it years ago, and had only waited for it to mature before he married it.  Mrs. Gardner had a habit of sitting apart from the discussion and untroubled by it, tolerant in her own excess of bliss.  It irritated Mrs. Eliott, on her Thursdays, to think of the distinguished ideas that Mrs. Gardner might have introduced and didn’t.  She 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.