Helen, in the darkness, smiled half bitterly, half affectionately. Gerald's nonsense always pleased her, even when she was most exasperated with him. She was not exasperated with Gerald in particular just now, but with everything and everybody, herself included, and the fact that he liked to flirt flagrantly with Lady Pickering did not move her more than usual. It was not a particular but a general irritation that edged her voice a little as she said, drawing her black scarf more closely round her shoulders, 'Frances must satisfy you there. Your tastes, I think, are becoming more and more dishevelled.' But innocent Gerald answered with a coal of fire: 'No, she is too dishevelled. You satisfy my tastes there entirely; you flow, but you don't flop. Now if Miss Jakes would only try to dress like you she'd be immensely improved. You are perfect.' And he lightly touched her scarf as he spoke with a fraternal and appreciative hand. Helen continued to smile in the darkness, but it was over an almost irresistible impulse to sob. The impulse was so strong that it frightened her, and it was with immense relief that she saw Althea's figure--her 'box-like' figure--appear in the lighted window. She did not want to talk to Althea, and she could not, just now, go on talking to Gerald. From their corner of the terrace she indicated the vaguely gazing Althea. 'There she is,' she said. 'Go and talk to her. Be nice to her. I'm tired and am going to have a stroll in the shrubberies before bed.' She left Gerald obediently, if not eagerly, moving towards the window, and slipping into the obscurity of the shrubberies she threw back her scarf and drew long breaths. She was becoming terribly overwrought. It had been, since so long, a second nature to live two lives that any danger of their merging affected her with a dreadful feeling of disintegration. There was the life of comradeship, the secure little compartment where Gerald was at home, so at home that he could tell her she was perfect and touch her scarf with an approving hand, and from this familiar shelter she had looked for so long, with the calmest eye, upon his flirtations, and in it had heard, unmoved, his encomiums upon herself. The other life, the real life, was all outdoors in comparison; it was all her real self, passionate, untamed, desolate; it was like a bleak, wild moorland, and the social, the comrade self only a strongly built little lodge erected, through stress of wind and weather, in the midst of it. Since girlhood it had been a second nature to her to keep comradeship shut in and reality shut out. And to-night reality seemed to shake and batter at the doors.