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 the stars were coming out. What was he? A genius or a clown? A creature to spread a buttered slide or a man to climb to heaven? A fine, free child of Nature, who did, freshly, what he would, regardless of the strained discretion of others, or a futile, scheming hypocrite, screaming after forced puerilities, without even a finger on the skirts of originality? It was a problem for lonely woman’s debate. Winifred strove to weigh it well. In Bluebeard’s Chamber Eustace had cut many capers. This activity she had expected--had even wished for. And at first she had been amused and entertained by the antics, as one assisting at a good burlesque, through which, moreover, a piquant love theme runs. But by degrees she began to feel a certain stiffness in the capers, a self-consciousness in the antics, or fancied she began to feel it, and instead of being always amused she became often thoughtful. Whimsicality she loved. Buffoonery she possibly, even probably, could learn to hate. Of Eustace’s love for her she had no doubt. She was certain of his affection. But was it worth having? That depended, surely, on the nature of the man in whom it sprang, from whom it flowed. She wanted to be sure of that nature; but she acknowledged to herself, as she sat by the fire, that she was perplexed. Perhaps even that perplexity was merciful. Yet she wished to sweep it away. She knit her brows moodily, and longed for a secret divining-rod that would twist to reveal truth in another. For truth, she thought, is better than hidden water-springs, and a sincerity--even of stupidity--more lovely than the fountain that gives flowers to the desert, wild red roses to the weary gold of sands.