Because her father had wanted her to be a boy she felt she had acquired some masculine traits: courage, activity. When she shifted her ground she felt greater confidence. She thought a woman might love her some day for other qualities as they loved men for their strength, or genius, or wit.

Sabina's appearance, first as a model for Jay's paintings, then more and more into their intimate life, her chaotic and irresistible flow swept Lillian along into what seemed like a passion. But Lillian, with Djuna's help, had discovered the real nature of the relationship. It was a desire for an impossible union: she wanted to lose herself in Sabina and BECOME Sabina. This wanting to BE Sabina she had mistaken for love of Sabina's night beauty. She wanted to lie beside her and become her and be one with her and both arise as ONE woman; she wanted to add herself to Sabina, re-enforce the woman in herself, the submerged woman, intensify this woman Lillian she could not liberate fully. She wanted to merge with Sabina's freedom, her capacity for impulsive action, her indifference to consequences. She wanted to smooth her rebellious hair with Sabina's clinging hair, smooth her own denser skin by the touch of Sabina's silkier one, set her own blue eyes on fire with Sabina's fawn eyes, drink Sabina's voice in place of her own, and, disguised as Sabina, out of her own body for good, to become one of the women so loved by her father.

She had loved in Sabina an unborn Lillian. By adding herself to Sabina she would become a more potent woman. In the presence of Sabina she existed more vividly. She chose a body she could love (being critical of her own), a freedom she could obey (which she could never possess), a face she could worship (not being pleased with her own). She believed love quite capable of such metamorphosis.

These feelings had been obscure, unformulated until the night the three of them had gone out together and Sabina had drunk a whole bottle of Pernod. She had become violently ill. Jay and Lillian had nursed her. Sabina was almost delirious. She was easily prone to fever and Lillian was alarmed by the way her face seemed to be consumed from within. She stretched out beside her to watch over her. Jay had gone to sleep in the studio.

In the first version of that night, gathered from Sabina's smoky talk and Lillian's evasions. Jay had believed that jealousy of him had sprung between them and separated them. But this was only on the surface. Later Lillian saw another drama.

Both Sabina and Lillian, faced with a woman, realized they felt closeness but not desire. They had kissed, and that was all.