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.