She returned moments later bearing Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume one. An old leather-bound library book, checked out years before by a feckless student, never returned. Sophy rose, took it into her arms, stooped slightly over it, and shuffled across the room. They all burst into laughter, even Sophy, though hers was a sound of honest joy floating on the sea of derision. What the rest of them took as a joke Sophy accepted as a reprieve.
In time her new self became familiar to them. With them, after a shower, her robe belted loosely around her, she was lovely as the dawn, but in public Sophy wore borrowed clothing, was camouflaged like a hermit crab, no longer the object of male fascination and desire.
It was a shared secret, one that made them more than merely friends. They became a club: the Decline and Fall Club. They swore an oath to one another. Even after they left school, they would stay close to one another. They would meet every year, and each of them would find a place to stand where she could be woman as woman was meant to be, and thereafter she would never decline or fall from that place.
All of the characters in this book art fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental
This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
THE GATE TO WOMEN’S COUNTRY
A Bantam Spectra Book/published by arrangement with Doubleday
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Doubleday edition published September 1988
Bantam edition / August 1989
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1988 by Sheri S. Tepper.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 88-387
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Doubleday, 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036
eISBN: 978-0-307-57344-5
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada, Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway New York, New York 10036.
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