After dinner two tables for bridge were arranged, with Geoffrey at one, Helen at the other, and he did not speak to her again until, after saying good-night to Lavinia, she half-turned to him, bringing into play the suave clear line of chin and throat. "I'll take you home if you like," she offered casually. "I've got my car here." As Geoffrey thanked her formally he felt that again she had put him at a disadvantage. He should have had a car to take her home in, but for her to take him, dropping him like a small boy at his mother's front door, was humiliating. It irked him to sit idle while she slipped into the driver's seat and pressed a green slipper ruthlessly on the starter knob. There was a moment of rending noise, then, "Better let me turn her over once or twice," Geoffrey suggested. "The engine's bound to be cold if it's been standing out here all that long time with no rug on. "I never do put a rug on," Helen looked at him sidelong. "If you once begin pampering your car there's no end to it." Geoffrey burst out laughing. It re-established his superiority to find that she could be silly, petulant and peevish. "I simply don't believe you," he said through the agonising noise of the self-starter. "You forgot I expect, and now you won't admit it." At that minute the engine suddenly jumped to life, and Helen started the car with a grinding of gears and a jerk. There was good ground for criticism but Geoffrey held his peace, and in a moment he heard her saying: "Do you want to go straight home or would you like to come to my studio for a bit?" Surprised, he answered promptly. "The studio most certainly, please." "It's a queer untidy sort of hovel. Only a bedroom and a kitchen and a lovely big studio. I don't live there all the time you see. In fact my family kick against my living there at all, and I have to go home at frequent intervals. But when they get too much for me I come and live in the studio for a few weeks." "Is the family atmosphere particularly trying then, and is it in London?" "No, and yes. It is in London, in Lowndes Square, and it isn't really trying at all. They're darlings, but I'm very difficult, you know." "So I should imagine," said Geoffrey softly, to which Helen only replied: "Do you mind not talking? I can't cope with the traffic if I have to concentrate on you." As they drove along the Embankment, Geoffrey twisted his body into the corner of the car, to watch her face as she drove. Even in the cold yellow light that struck over her as they approached each lamp-post, and faded so quickly as they passed it, her colouring disturbed and troubled him.