Yet the strange and growing involvement of Jacky S. with young Lilian Arvel is meticulously and yet vividly observed by the victim himself. For Lilian is not the innocent Little Nell or Little Em'ly of Victorian family reading. She is eager to be morally corrupted, her passion woken with a perverseness which unnerves her middle-aged seducer. Suburban Souls sees this girl-child by the new light of Freudian theory, rather than in the comforting glow of Dickensian sentiment.

Jacky himself is set on enjoying her. Yet, he adds, "I wanted her to find a worthy husband and go to him a virgin. I told her so. I made her understand that on the day of her marriage I would retire from her life." This confusion of passion and guilt augurs ill for the developing relationship.

In no time at all the hero and his adolescent mistress are meeting secretly in an apartment on the Rue de Leipzig. Though Lilian's virginity is preserved, she is an eager partner in bed, sucking her lover's erection, guiding it to the entrance of her vagina, though restraining its penetration, and squeezing it to orgasm between her bare thighs.