[1] Gyles severed ties with her family and reportedly supported herself by selling a watch and writing stories for an Irish paper.

[1] By 1896, Gyles had established a studio at 86, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, and was a friend of the art critic Lady Colin Campbell and the artist Mabel Dearmer.

In June 1896, her drawing The Offering of Pan appeared in The Commonweal, and in 1897 she illustrated T. W. Rolleston's Deirdre: the Feis Ceoil Prize Cantata.

She has done, besides the lyric I quote, which is charming in form and substance, a small number of poems full of original symbolism and spiritual ardour, though as yet lacking in rhythmical subtlety.

For the top board of The Night (1900), by John White-Rodyng, she pictured four swirling birds pecking at a heart between a sun and a moon, with stars.

[4] At the time of the 1901 United Kingdom census, Gyles was a visitor in the household of Helen Croker in Bournemouth and described herself as “Artist Sculptor”, single, aged 34.

The breakdown of Smithers and Gyles's relationship led to a collapse in her health, from which she never recovered completely, and her work as a productive designer was effectively over.

Her only surviving work is the rejected frontispiece for Yeats's The Wind Among the Reeds, which in the event was re-used for The Shadowy Waters (1900), and is held in the British Library.

[4] Gyles published verse occasionally in the Saturday Review, the Candid Friend, The Kensington, The Venture, The Academy, Orpheus, and The Vineyard.

Compton and Faith Mackenzie visited her at her home in Paradise Walk, Chelsea, describing her living conditions as having "an atmosphere of squalid poverty", leading to the couple inviting her to Cornwall in May 1908.

Eleanor Farjeon described her as "quite exquisitely gifted, as a writer and an artist; with the sort of temperament that stood in her own light", but added that she was "fascinating and exhausting."

She gravitated towards a variety of movements and interests, which included horoscope writing, Buddhism, anti-vivisection, and vegetarianism, while being supported by dissatisfied patrons such as Clifford Bax, who considered her a parasite.

The last address recorded for her was 19, Tredown Road, Lewisham, at which time her room was empty except for a chaise longue, a few items of bric-à-brac, and her manuscripts.