Diane was seventeen - child of an unknown father, daughter of a woman who loved freely but with a lack of practicality that had quickly exasperated the growing girl.

They were fringe members of the glamorous "International Set,” a glittering, precarious, alcoholic world which left its children to grow like puppies on whatever canapes they could snatch. Love was a commercial commodity which, however, often failed lamentably when it came to knowing where the next pheasant-under-glass was coming from.

By the age of fourteen, although not yet mature enough herself to contribute regularly to the family welfare, Diane was 'managing her mother's affairs with some degree of success. To say that she was precocious would be to misstate the matter. Diane lived in and by the kind of world that had created her. She had in fact made a splendid adjustment to the circumstances and carried no taint of morality in her make-up. With the whole focus of her childhood and girlhood based in the matter-of-fact necessity of keeping her mother faithful to affluent lovers, Diane suddenly found herself grown into an attractive young animal with needs and desires that interfered tempestuously with her own practical design for living...