“D’you mean to tell me you’ve reached the age of twenty-four without reading Gibbon?” he demanded.

“Yes, I have,” she answered.

“Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed, throwing out his hands.  “You must begin to-morrow.  I shall send you my copy.  What I want to know is—­” he looked at her critically.  “You see, the problem is, can one really talk to you?  Have you got a mind, or are you like the rest of your sex?  You seem to me absurdly young compared with men of your age.”

Rachel looked at him but said nothing.

“About Gibbon,” he continued.  “D’you think you’ll be able to appreciate him?  He’s the test, of course.  It’s awfully difficult to tell about women,” he continued, “how much, I mean, is due to lack of training, and how much is native incapacity.  I don’t see myself why you shouldn’t understand—­only I suppose you’ve led an absurd life until now—­you’ve just walked in a crocodile, I suppose, with your hair down your back.”

The music was again beginning.  Hirst’s eye wandered about the room in search of Mrs. Ambrose.  With the best will in the world he was conscious that they were not getting on well together.

“I’d like awfully to lend you books,” he said, buttoning his gloves, and rising from his seat.  “We shall meet again.  I’m going to leave you now.”

He got up and left her.

Rachel looked round.  She felt herself surrounded, like a child at a party, by the faces of strangers all hostile to her, with hooked noses and sneering, indifferent eyes.  She was by a window, she pushed it open with a jerk.  She stepped out into the garden.  Her eyes swam with tears of rage.

“Damn that man!” she exclaimed, having acquired some of Helen’s words.  “Damn his insolence!”

She stood in the middle of the pale square of light which the window she had opened threw upon the grass.  The forms of great black trees rose massively in front of her.  She stood still, looking at them, shivering slightly with anger and excitement.  She heard the trampling and swinging of the dancers behind her, and the rhythmic sway of the waltz music.

“There are trees,” she said aloud.  Would the trees make up for St. John Hirst?  She would be a Persian princess far from civilisation, riding her horse upon the mountains alone, and making her women sing to her in the evening, far from all this, from the strife and men and women—­a form came out of the shadow; a little red light burnt high up in its blackness.

“Miss Vinrace, is it?” said Hewet, peering at her.  “You were dancing with Hirst?”

“He’s made me furious!” she cried vehemently.  “No one’s any right to be insolent!”

“Insolent?” Hewet repeated, taking his cigar from his mouth in surprise.  “Hirst—­insolent?”

“It’s insolent to—­” said Rachel, and stopped.  She did not know exactly why she had been made so angry.  With a great effort she pulled herself together.