Her brother’s brutality moves Emmaline to run away with Sophie, but in a cottage where they spend an idyllic week she is unwilling to accept the caresses the other girl now consciously burns to bestow. When circumstances finally overcome Emmaline’s reluctance, she does not share Sophie’s transports. Somewhat repelled, and afraid for her reputation, she slips away and returns home. Sophie is left broken-hearted by her desertion. She realizes that she has failed Emmaline exactly as her own husband has failed with her, and she determines to find out how one woman can satisfy another. Hiding in Paris from her husband, she allows herself to be initiated by a lesbian show girl, Magalo, with whom she lives for some time, physically captivated but hating herself for inconstancy to Emmaline. The discovery that she is pregnant as a result of her wedding night brings her to the verge of suicide. She loathes the very thought of maternity; when her child is born, she consigns it to an orphanage without a qualm. Her partner, Magalo, is shocked and hurt, being genuinely in love with her and having envisioned a life _en famille_ for them and the child. Sophie turns against Magalo in distaste because of the girl’s interest in motherhood. Upon her mother’s death, Sophie, left enormously wealthy, makes plans to recapture Emmaline. She is confident that she can now both support her and adequately fill the role of husband. In Fontainebleau, however, she learns that Emmaline has married, her family has dispersed, and her whereabouts are unknown. Once again, heartbroken, she returns to Paris. Now she establishes a smart ménage and acquires an enormous lesbian following. Under her spell, actresses, artists and women of title neglect careers, male lovers, and husbands. She is known as ‘a giver of incomparable joys, violent and sophisticated, deliciously and frightfully inventive.’[26] Into this spectacular brilliance breaks Magalo, destitute, broken, and ill. In a scene of deathbed repentance the girl, claiming guidance from Heaven, implores Sophie to give up her empty and miserable life and return to her husband and child. There can be no other happiness on earth. ‘We both have had a demon in us,’ she says, ‘but for you it is not too late.’ Sophie’s response is to go directly from Magalo’s funeral to an orgiastic lesbian banquet where she glories in her role of presiding goddess (or demon). With this defiance, a third stage in her disintegration begins. Her liaisons, always loveless, now fail to give even sensual satisfaction, and she knows only boredom, relieved less and less frequently by flashes of desire. Haunted by memories of her only real love, she ferrets out Emmaline’s whereabouts in the hope that even a brief encounter may rekindle her own jaded emotions.