She fell back on the cushions of the stern seat, vexed with her own agitation.  She had described herself truly.  She was proud, and it was hard for her to “climb down.”  But there was much else in the mixed feeling that possessed her.  There seemed, for one thing, to be a curious happiness in it; combined also with a renewed jealousy for an independence she might have seemed to be giving away.  She wanted to say—­“Don’t misunderstand me!—­I’m not really giving up anything vital—­I mean all the same to manage my life in my own way.”  But it was difficult to say it in the face of the coatless man opposite, of whose house she had become practically mistress, and who had changed all his personal modes of life to suit hers.  Her eyes wandered to the gay scene of the house and its gardens, with its Watteau-ish groups of young men and maidens, under the night sky, its light and music.  All that had been done, to give her pleasure, by a man who had for years conspicuously shunned society, and whose life in the old country house, before her advent, had been, as she had come to know, of the quietest.  She bent forward again, impulsively: 

“Cousin Philip!—­I’m enjoying this party enormously—­it’s awfully, awfully good of you—­but I don’t want you to do it any more—­”

“Do what, Helena?”

“Please, I can get along without any more week-ends, or parties.  You—­you spoil me!”

“Well—­we’re going up to London, aren’t we, soon?  But I daresay you’re right”—­his tone grew suddenly grave.  “While we dance, there is a terrible amount of suffering going on in the world.”

“You mean—­after the war?”

He nodded.  “Famine everywhere—­women and children dying—­half a dozen bloody little wars.  And here at home we seem to be on the brink of civil war.”

“We oughtn’t to be amusing ourselves at all!—­that’s the real truth of it,” said Helena with gloomy decision.  “But what are we to do—­women, I mean?  They told me at the hospital yesterday they get rid of their last convalescents next week.  What is there for me to do?  If I were a factory girl, I should be getting unemployment benefit.  My occupation’s gone—­such as it was—­it’s not my fault!”

“Marry, my dear child,—­and bring up children,” said Buntingford bluntly.  “That’s the chief duty of Englishwomen just now.”

Helena flushed and said nothing.  They drifted nearer to the bank, and Helena perceived, at the end of a little creek, a magnificent group of yew trees, of which the lower branches were almost in the water.  Behind them, and to the side of them, through a gap in the wood, the moonlight found its way, but they themselves stood against the faint light, superbly dark, and impenetrable, black water at their feet.  Buntingford pointed to them.

“They’re fine, aren’t they?  This lake of course is artificial, and the park was only made out of arable land a hundred years ago.  I always imagine these trees mark some dwelling-house, which has disappeared.  They used to be my chief haunt when I was a boy.  There are four of them, extraordinarily interwoven.  I made a seat in one of them.  I could see everything and everybody on the lake, or in the garden; and nobody could see me.  I once overheard a proposal!”