I have promised to lend her Gibbon." "It's not Gibbon exactly," Helen pondered.

"It's the facts of life, I think--d'you see what I mean?
What really goes on, what people feel, although they generally try to hide it?
There's nothing to be frightened of.

It's so much more beautiful than the pretences--always more interesting--always better, I should say, than _that_ kind of thing." She nodded her head at a table near them, where two girls and two young men were chaffing each other very loudly, and carrying on an arch insinuating dialogue, sprinkled with endearments, about, it seemed, a pair of stockings or a pair of legs.

One of the girls was flirting a fan and pretending to be shocked, and the sight was very unpleasant, partly because it was obvious that the girls were secretly hostile to each other.
"In my old age, however," Helen sighed, "I'm coming to think that it doesn't much matter in the long run what one does: people always go their own way--nothing will ever influence them." She nodded her head at the supper party.
But St.John did not agree.

He said that he thought one could really make a great deal of difference by one's point of view, books and so on, and added that few things at the present time mattered more than the enlightenment of women.