The feminine incidents in the novel concern an actress who, at thirteen, had adored a boarding school teacher; however, she cooled when the latter responded, because she hated to be caressed. Her teens included similar attractions, and she had several unpleasant experiences with men during her years of becoming established in the theatre. These experiences precede the opening of the story. The action begins with amateur theatrical activities at a summer hotel, in the course of which Antoinette falls in love with a taciturn dark woman reminiscent of her first idol, and, on the other hand, rouses emotional interest in an effeminate young man in the cast. The summer interlude ends without resolving either affair. Both amours are continued by letter, a medium which frees Antoinette of her physical inhibitions. Thus, she learns that Dennis has previously been much drawn to men; and on her part, she becomes so attached to the dark Hester that she visits her in Birmingham. She is as yet unaware of any “abnormality” in her feeling, knowing only that Hester represents the promise of some imperative emotional release. When she discovers that Hester has had a liaison with a man, her love is instantly chilled, although it had reached the verge of overt expression. Meanwhile, Dennis, obtaining no response from her, has become involved with a poet in desperate circumstances for whom he feels a maternal tenderness. From this point on, the long narrative is concerned chiefly with its male cast, but it includes Antoinette’s finally considering herself in love with Dennis. He has now, however, irrevocably elected the homosexual path; he tells her that he recognized her at first meeting as another homosexual and that that was the reason for his instant attraction. Despite his immediate detection of her proclivities, Antoinette is presented as feminine in both appearance and temperament. The cause of her narcissistic failure in either normal or variant adjustment is that throughout adolescence she was always awaiting the charmed age of eighteen, when the thrilling business of Real Life would begin. That is, she nursed a romantic ideal impossible of realistic achievement (cf. Gourmont’s _Songe d’une Femme_). At the end she complains: Everybody seems to think you’re abnormal because you _like_ to be.... As if being different from other people weren’t curse enough in itself.... People judge the fine by the sensual, of whom there are plenty also among the “normal.”[38] This is a fair enough statement of a variant argument which will be encountered again later.