I really believed that I could cope with any problem, when I said that to Jan. I had no way of foreseeing how Bob's meanness and treachery would one day erect a barricade of misery, shutting me off from the happiness I treasured.

I'm glad I didn't know in advance. Facing it when it confronted me was trial enough. As it was, no shadow of the danger ahead fell upon the happiness of the present. The future was, to me, a surprise package covered in a rosy wrapping of what I hoped it would be. "Precious," Jan said lovingly, "I still wish—”

"Someday we'll go away together, like we've planned," I reminded. "Have our own little home, our own pets, and have friends who understand us."

"Yes," Jan said. "We'll know other homosexual couples who have the same standards and ideals we do. We'll have a good life, a constructive life. And we'll mingle also with those unlike us, without offending them. We'll make a good adjustment to the world." She ran her fingers gently through my hair. "When do you think we can begin such a life together? When?" "Not until I'm twenty-one," I said. "If I tried before, Mother, though she doesn't actually love me or want me, would make trouble for us both.'

"I suppose so," Jan said wearily. Then she brightened. "Well we'll dream of the day when we can make our dreams come true. 9.9

"Yes, Jan!"

"And until then we'll spend as much time together as possible." Jan's arm tightened about me. "I have a strange feeling that somewhere along the way the going will be rugged for us. Yet deep in my heart I seem to know that somehow we'll make it."

"We'll make it!" I pressed my lips to Jan's warm cheek. And she turned her head and kissed me, before she started the motor.

All the way back to my house, Jan and I were quiet.

But in that quietness we experienced a sense of oneness that was beautiful. We both had wiped all thoughts of Bob from our minds. Just Jan and me, in a world of And we felt as if God who created us, who understood and loved us, was smiling at us.

our own.

CHAPTER FOUR

Because of Beth's increasing rudeness to Jan, I stopped having her come to the house for visits. But I spent most of my time with her. Mother punished me for it, by treating me as if I were beneath her contempt. Yet, though she disliked Jan, and despised her boyish quality, Mother really didn't know that Jan was

my lover.

Mother's greatest complaint against Jan was that she didn't go out with men. I remember how Mother scoffed,

"Spending all your time with that girl will make an old maid out of you. Why won't you date boys like other girls do?"

I smiled and replied,

"I'm doing what I want to do." And I was.

I, who had no sexual outlet until Jan came to me, had suddenly discovered the exciting world of sex. To me, sexual expression had become very necessary. I realized I am one of those persons who has a tremendous capacity for enjoyment of sex.

To one who has never known the throes and ecstasy of lesbian love, with its scope of physical, mental and spiritual richness, it may be that some of the accounts I give of the sexual intimacies Jan and I shared, are shocking. But to us, please bear in mind, nothing we ever did seemed wrong. Everything that happened be-