Ideala

She came among us without flourish of trumpets. She just slipped into her place, almost unnoticed, but once she was settled there it seemed as if we had got something we had wan...

Speaking to me of women one day, she said: "Certainly they are _vainqueurs des vainqueurs de la terre_ in any sense they choose; but the pity of it is that they do not choose to...

Ideala held that dignity and calm are essential in a woman, but, like the rest of the world, she found it hard to attain to her own standard of excellence. Her bursts of enthusi...

When I first knew Ideala her religious opinions were all unsettled. "I neither believe nor disbelieve," she told me; "I am in a state of don't know; or perhaps it would be more...

"There are so many thousands of us," she said, "who have no object in life, and nothing to make us take it seriously. My own is a case in point. I am not necessary, even to my h...

She knew the poor of the place well, and took a lively interest in all that concerned them; and occasionally she would confide some of her own odd observations and reflections t...

Ideala's notions of propriety were altogether unconventional. She never could be made to understand that it was not the proper thing to talk familiarly to any one she met, and d...

When we were a small party of intimate friends, and Ideala was quite at her ease with us, it was pleasant to see her lolling, a little languidly as was her wont (for physically...

Ideala's low esteem for "mere animal courage" was probably due to the fact that she possessed it herself in a high degree. Yet soon after I met her I began to suspect, and was a...

Ideala had been married eight years, and two months after that night the long-delayed hope of her life, which she had begun to believe was beyond hope, was at last realised. Her...

My widowed sister, Claudia, was one of Ideala's most intimate friends. She was a good deal older than Ideala, whom she loved as a mother loves a naughty child, for ever finding...

A little while after that evening at the Palace we learnt to our dismay that Ideala's husband had taken a house in one of the rough manufacturing districts, to which he meant to...

It seems that after they left our neighbourhood Ideala had, by accident, made a number of small discoveries about her husband which had the effect of destroying any remnant of r...

The Great Hospital had been founded by an eccentric old gentleman of enormous wealth for an entirely original purpose. He observed that great buildings were erected everywhere t...

But of all this Ideala knew little or nothing when she went there, except that the Great Hospital existed for some learned purpose. She felt the power of the place, however, pre...

The following week Ideala came to London, but not to us--she had promised to stay with some other people first. She wrote three times to Lorrimer while she was with them--first...

To give the story continuity it will be necessary to piece the events together as they followed. Many of them only came to my knowledge some time after they occurred, and even t...

In the days that followed a singular change came over Ideala. No external circumstance affected her. She moved like one in a dream; thought had ceased for her; all life was one...

He let her go, somewhat bewildered, and not understanding herself or him, nor caring to understand, only happy, dangerously happy. The train bore her through an enchanted region...

The people seemed to have deserted the house. Even the Tawdry One had disappeared, and Ideala was obliged to lay out the poor dear girl herself, and make her ready for decent bu...

Ideala was unable to exert herself for many days after this. At last, however, she began to think of work again, and of Lorrimer. She was uneasy about him. He had not been himse...

For quite three months we heard nothing of Ideala, but we were not alarmed, as she often neglected us in this way when she was busy. At last, however, Claudia received a note fr...

About a month after she came to us, Ideala caught a bad cold. The doctor said her chest was very delicate. There was no disease, but she required great care, and must not go out...

In a few days she returned to us, and we were amazed at the change in her. Her voice was clear again, her step elastic, her complexion had recovered some of its brilliancy; ther...

I went to consult my sister Claudia. The blow was a heavy one for her also; but I was surprised to find that she did not share my contempt for the person whom I considered respo...

Ideala lingered unwillingly, but the reason of her reluctance to go was not far to seek. Now that Lorrimer knew she loved him she was ashamed to go back. It would have been bad...

Ideala had returned to us quite under the impression that if she took the step she proposed we should think it right to cast her off; and that little tentative: "Must I give you...

I hoped Claudia's plain speaking had made an impression, but for a long time after that it seemed as if Ideala's interest in life had really ended, that her sphere of usefulness...

Claudia did not see the change in Ideala all at once. She said: "She is looking her best, and is our own Ideala again--faults and all! How she talked last night!"

We soon found that Ideala, having at last put her hand to the plough, worked with a will, and although she was true to her principle that a woman's best work is done beneath the...