Once again winter came and went and now Lisette Joyaux, in the full flower of womanhood, eagerly awaited the summons to the neighboring house where her four friends dwelt. As was their custom, they were wintering on the French Riviera, and so it was with mounting impatience that she anticipated their return, dreaming again and again of the exquisite, forbidden joys she learned from Janine, Suzanne, Madeleine, and Paulette.

In May, however, the postman delivered a letter with a Parisian address for "Mademoiselle Lisette Joyaux." Her aunt detected Lisette's anxiety when old Madame Perichaud had brought in the letter and announced: "There's a letter for your niece, Mademoiselle Hortensia. Wonder who it's from?"

Lisette tore open the envelope and unfolded the single sheet. She stared at it incredulously and then burst into tears.

"What is it, my darling?" her aunt anxiously asked.

"It's from my friends next door," Lisette sobbed. "They won't be back this summer. Maybe not at all, ever!"

"What a dreadful shame, my poor darling," her aunt consoled her. "But what has happened?"

Lisette bit her lip and lowered her eyes, for once again the memory of those vivid afternoons in the mansion returned to haunt her. In her mind she saw anew the lovely faces of her four initiators and the scenes of their playful disciplinary games with her, games that turned into passionate fulfilment for the golden-haired girl and were her only knowledge of carnal passion. And to think! - she might never see them again! Lisette suddenly felt lost and desolate.

The letter, written by Janine Ericourt, was brief. Her estranged husband, it seemed, had died suddenly and thus there was no reason to prolong her exile from Paris as stipulated in the divorce decree. She accordingly decided to take a house in the suburbs near the Porte Neuilly, where she and the others would live from now on. She enjoined Lisette to visit them if ever she travelled to Paris. They would always remember her, she stated, with the tenderest affection. And the note was signed, "Your Janine, who speaks for Suzanne, Madeleine, and Paulette as well."

But Lisette knew that visiting Paris would be unlikely. She loved her old aunt with fierce loyalty and did not wish to leave her alone. So the girl remained inconsolable and spent her hours walking through the countryside, ever dreaming of those magical moments when she was a willing love-slave of those four glamorous and tender Lesbians.

Nevertheless, Hortensia began seriously thinking of sending her maturing niece away to finishing school. In the little Normandy province, there was only a rural elementary and high school, which Lisette had once attended. The elderly aunt recognized also that her niece would inherit a modest fortune soon, a trust set up by Lisette's parents. In addition, she realized her own weak heart and anaemia did not allow her long to live. Of this Lisette knew nothing, since the aunt wished not to alarm the girl. Nevertheless, the spinster made preparations for that inevitable circumstance. Only two weeks before Janine's letter arrived, Hortensia Clomaris called the housekeeper into her bedroom and had a serious conversation with her concerning what must be done at such time when she should succumb to her increasing ailments.

Madame Perichaud burst into tears and protested that her employer had a long life ahead of her. But the now-blind elderly woman smiled, shook her head, and retorted. "You mustn't try to give me too much courage, dear Madame Perichaud. I'm resigned to it. I have lived a good life and le bon Dieu has been generous in giving me this child of my own, this sweet niece, Lisette. Now you and I must think of her future, for she has been sheltered all her life, and she is unworldly and knows nothing of men and women. Little did Hortensia Clomaris suspect how much Lisette already knew of the secret intimacies of woman- love!

And so in September, Lisette, obedient to her aunt's wishes, was enrolled in a girl's finishing school at Montregard, a hundred miles to the south. Meanwhile, Hortensia Clomaris after consulting with her doctor, wrote a lengthy letter to one Edgar Duverneuil, a prosperous attorney with offices in Paris plus an apartment on the Rue Foch and a summer home in Nice. Thirty years before, Hortensia Clomaris fell desperately in love with the then-struggling young law student. But his parents insisted he make a more propitious match with a young bride offering a greater dowry than could Lisette's aunt.

The spinster, true to her first love, avoided all other men thereafter, content to remain unmarried with only tender memories of Edgar Duverneüil - memories that grew dearer through the long, lonely years. She idealized that platonic relationship and endowed the lawyer with all the virtues of Sir Galahad. But now, realizing her end was near, Hortensia Clomaris believed it was wise to put Lisette's affairs into the hands of a learned and skilful attorney. And she had followed Edgar Duverneuil's flourishing legal career through reports in the Paris newspapers, which were regularly sent to her little country home for that express purpose.

Thus she wrote him a lengthy letter, touching briefly on his significance in her youth and pleading with him-for the sake of old time and happy memories-to become the guardian and the legal executor of her niece's estate. She lived frugally, she told him in the letter, and saved all the money that Lisette's parents left at the time of their tragic death.

Within a week, Edgar Duverneuil wrote her a long, ardent answer, recalling those Bohemian days when he was a law student and ambitious for a career. He regretted that his parents intervened, preventing him from wedding the woman of his choice.

He lamented the fact that he had burdened Hortensia Clomaris with great sorrow because the two of them could not marry. However, he wrote, too, that his wife was dutiful and helpful in advancing his career. She bore him a son, of whom he was justly proud. The boy, Jacques, was now twenty-five and about to enter his father's office as a qualified attorney, having just passed his bar examinations.

Hortensia Clomaris sighed with relief at this welcome news, and for her, too, memories were revived, memories, however, quite different from Lisette's. Although Edgar Duverneuil, always the gentleman and most circumspect, never possessed her eager body, she, nevertheless, felt intense passion for him. And so when death came for her one cold February night, she passed to her reward believing that Lisette's future was in good hands. Little could she then guessed the ironic way that fate would shape her niece's life. For it was destined that Jacques, the son of Hortensia Clomaris's only lover, would fall in love with Lisette Joyaux and make her his love-slave, just as she had once been enslaved to Janine, Suzanne, Madeleine, and Paulette!