arning.

Eustace was out. He had gone to a concert, and had not returned.

She was holding a council to decide something in reference to him.

The honeymoon weeks had brought her just as far as the question, "Do I
know my husband at all, or is he, so far, a total stranger?"

Some people seem to draw near to you as you look at them steadily,
others to recede until they reach the verge of invisibility. Which was
Eustace doing? Did his outline become clearer or more blurred? Was he
daily more definite or more phantasmal? And the members of her council
drew near and whispered their opinions in Winifred's attentive ears.
They were not all in accord at the first. Pros fought with cons, elbowed
them, were hustled in return. Sometimes there was almost a row, and she
had to stretch forth her hands and hush the tumult. For she desired a
calm conclave, although she was a woman.

And the final decision--if, indeed, it could be arrived at that
evening--was important. Love seemed to hang upon it, and all the sweets
of life; and the little wings of Love fluttered anxiously, as the little
wings of a bird flutter when you hold it in the cage of your hands,
prisoning it from its wayward career through the blue shadows of the
summer.

For love is not always and for ever instinctive--not even the finest
love. While many women love because they must, whether the thing to be
loved or not loved be carrion or crystal, a child of the gods or an imp
of the devil, others love decisively because they see--perhaps can even
analyze--a beauty that is there in the thing before them. One woman
loves a man simply because he kisses her. Another loves him because he
has won the Victoria Cross.

Winifred was not of the women who love because they are kissed.

She had accepted Eustace rather impulsively, but she had not married him
quite uncritically. There was something new, different from other
men, about him which attracted her, as well as his good looks--that
prettiness which had peeped out from the white wig in the scarlet nook
at the ball. His oddities at that time she had grown thoroughly to
believe in, and, believing in them, she felt she liked them. She
supposed them to spring, rather like amazing spotted orchids, from
the earth of a quaint nature. Now, after a honeymoon spent among the
orchids, she held this council while the wind blew London into a mood of
evening irritation.

What was Eustace?

How the wind sang over Park Lane! Yet t