After the post-World War I socialist and Communist governments were crushed in 1920, Gárdos was forced to flee into exile before returning in 1932.

She moved to Kolozsvár (now Cluj-Napoca, Romania), about 1905 where she worked as a journalist for a few years before returning to Budapest around 1908 where she was employed part-time in a lawyer's office.

She married the socialist journalist Ernő Brestovszky in 1909, but they divorced after the death of their infant daughter, Márta.

After the collapse of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, she fled to Vienna, Austria and did not return to Budapest until 1932 where she died on 23 January 1973.

[1] Gárdos joined the Social Democratic Party of Hungary in 1900 and helped to found the KAS shortly afterwards.