lounge afterward, face to the wall, and devour it in one dizzy oblivious afternoon...

'On the Shoreline train going down to The Landing, Honora Williams presently became aware of a rigid, silent freckled poker-face turned stubbornly to the window. No need of opening the book for that first sentencel Nor scarcely for much of what followed. Nevertheless she opened it, and began to read alowly, luxuriously, savoring each loved phrase, never skipping a word. If its three-hundred-odd pages kept her up all night, so be it. This was her tardy rendezvous with Lynn Currier. Her night watch beside the stranger now dead whom she'd known and loved for nearly thirty years.

Well as she know the book, it held fresh, sure news tonight: In some measure, this was Lynn Currier's own story. Her first volume, autobiographical as so many of the 'firsts' are that spill out of the early twenties... Like fireflies there lit in her memory mall incidents scattered through the half dozen straight novels and the other gay one. Unmistakable recurring patterns, like motifs in music, transposed from key to key, from major to minor, but constant. The writer's own. And taken together, so deeply revealing..

Agnes Dawes lived the story as never before in all her hundred readings. Print on pages faded, and she was Cy Rawlings, rigid silent, with that reform-school chapter hidden in her past. Taken on sufferance as swimming coach. Burning up, eaten hollow with passion for Honora that must be as rigorously hidden. And Honora, athletic director, tall,cool, gallant... Oh Lynn, you were Honora! You knew that dam fool spoiled brat lost her ring in swimmingand lied. But with no proof, and the evidence trivial diabolical circumstancial evidence against Cy, and that hidden chapter bound to come out if... Into what quicksands did you walk once, Lynn...and for whom?

To the core she was Cy, shivering in her cabin, listening for the detective's step, planning how to kill herself if Honora believed... Then, panicked by the silence, peering out over the marsh and seeing suddenly grasping Honora's game, knowing its end and that to save her!

She ran out shrieking...too late.