'You are a virgin?' 'Yes.' 'How dull What's the use of being a woman if you're a virgin?' 'One has to begin sometime, ' I agreed. Recovering from an illness, Rachel, an 18-year-old art student at the Slade in London, is advised to spend a year in a warm climate. She agrees to go to France to act as companion to Cynthia, a delicate, temperamental woman whose husband is in India, and her two children, troubled 15-year-old...