"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."