Gamel Woolsey's startling novel about a woman's emotional and physical needs has for more than fifty years remained only in proof form. Intended for publication in 1932 it was withdrawn after the successful prosecution of *The Well of Loneliness* because of its sexual explicitness. At once graceful and naive, it follows the progress of Mariana Clare whose childhood reading of fairy tales convinces her that eternal love should not be reserved for immortals. Alone in New York at twenty-one, she is surprised by her bohemian friends' openness about sex, for it denies her own dreams about love's perfection. So too does the experience of marriage to Alan, but when they part she is still left with 'a curious fear that if she were not to find a lover she would be lonely in another world as well as in this.'