Eleanor Herbert Brent is a beautiful woman - tall, blond, athletic - whose sexuality forms her personality. In the beginning of the story she is a rather conventional young English university graduate, living in London, engaged to be married, waiting to begin her life as a wife and mother.
She talks as if only this traditional life will suite her but very soon and in quick succession, she breaks her engagement, has an affair with a man she meets on a boat, leaves him, becomes engaged again - but finally shies away from commitment to any man.
Sometimes the reader is impatient with Eleanor, sometimes one suffers with her. In either case, Miss Herbert is a literary portrait most stunningly drawn.