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 worrying about it now.”

“Isn’t it possible,” said the little year-old bride, “that Mr. Majendie may have told her himself?”

For Dr. Gardner had told her everything the day before he married her, confessing to the light loves of his youth, the young lady in the Free Library and all.  She looked round with eyes widened by their angelic candour.  Even more beautiful than Mrs. Gardner’s intellect were Mrs. Gardner’s eyes, and the love of them that brought the doctor’s home from their wanderings in philosophic dream.  Nobody but Dr. Gardner knew that Mrs. Gardner’s intellect had cause to be jealous of her eyes.

“There’s one thing,” said Mrs. Eliott, suddenly enlightened.  “Our not having said anything at the time makes it easier for us to receive him now.”

“Aren’t we all talking,” said Mrs. Gardner, “rather as if Anne had married a monster?  After all, have we ever heard anything against him—­except Lady Cayley?”

“Oh no, never a word, have we, Johnson dear?”

“Never.  He’s not half a bad fellow, Majendie.”

Dr. Gardner rose to go.

“Oh, please—­don’t go before they come.”

Mrs. Gardner hesitated, but the doctor, vague in his approaches, displayed a certain energy in his departure.

They passed Mrs. Walter Majendie on the stairs.