I'll never forget the afternoon when Jan and I faced the truth, that we were in love.

Hand in hand, we joyfully clambered over battered gray boulders with flat-topped ridges and admired the feathery mass of purple algae growing from the wavedrenched rocks. Then we lazily sat down and dangled our bare feet in a rocky pool.

There on that slab of rock we seemed the only two people on earth. A layer of fog drifted down, shutting out the sight of the beach. Only the water was now visible.

Suddenly we stopped laughing at the antics of a herd of seals bobbing on the ocean's blue-green surface. We turned and looked at each other.

Jan's short cropped hair was wind touse led, and mine tossed like yellow streamers about my shoulders. Without speaking, we both knew that we were beautiful to each other. Even the waves seemed to quiet down. "Honey" Jan said solemnly. "You've become increasingly dear to me. But-" She swallowed hard and her fingers pressed my hand. "But—if it's best for you I'll stop seeing you-leave town-" Her voice was quavering. "Because I don't want to interfere in your life.”

Leave town! What was Jan saying? Interfere in my life! I pressed her hand between my palins. My eyes filled with tears as I said, "Jan-you're my life!" It was then that she confessed, "Melba-I'm a lesbian."

I could feel my eyes widening. "A what?""

Then she told me,

"A lesbian's love and mating desires are for someone of her own sex.'

"Then" I felt my heart racing. "Jan-then-I'm a lesbian too."

She took a quick breath. And as her blue eyes adored

me, I admitted I'd always longed for, and dreamed of a girl who would love me.

Tears came into Jan's eyes.

"I love you, Melba. I'm completely in love with you."

"Jan-you're my dream lover come into reality," I said above the thunder my heart was making.

She shook her head gently from side to side, not in denial, but in wonder and awe.

"Melba, darling, I'd stopped hoping. And now-" "Why had you stopped hoping?" My eyes searched her face.

"I thought I was in love with a woman, once," she told me. "Later, I learned she wasn't a lesbian herself, just curious. She never told me she had a boy friend who was away at University. And while he was gone she played me for a fool. Melba, when I found out, I took it really hard."

"I'm sorry," I said over the choking sensation in my throat.

"With her I went through the motions of being a lover. But I know now it never really meant anything. She played on my sexual instincts-but at that time I never knew what real love was."

I leaned nearer to Jan.

"But you know now?" I said throatily. "With me, you know???

"Yes, darling. Now I know. Until I saw you I never was really hit. I must have sensed that you're as I am, even before I came to love you."

"Yes, Jan!" I shivered, wanting her embrace. Wanting her lips to meet mine.

"You've never-never had sex with anyone, have you?" Jan asked me.

"No," I admitted.

"Sex is part of lesbian love," Jan told me.

"I know," I replied, my heart pounding. “And I