The voice--cultured, ingenuous, and with a touch of coquetterie--is that of Sonoko Kakiuchi, an Osaka lady of good family married to a dully respectable lawyer. The story she has to tell leads the reader into a maze of temptation and betrayal. For Sonoko has become infatuated with the beautiful art student Mitsuko--a femme fatale as seductive and corrupt as any in the history of fiction, and a deceiver so heartlessly accomplished that she can turn even Sonoko's husband into her accomplice.