Rupert Pole

The story goes that their love affair began the moment they laid eyes on one another, in the elevator of a swank Manhattan apartment building in 1947. A few weeks later, the exotic-looking writer and the strapping young actor were driving to California on an adventure that would eventually lead to marriage. There was one problem: Anais Nin, the prolific diarist who would become a feminist heroine, already was married.

THE glass-and-concrete house on a hilly Silver Lake street appears tired and forlorn. The sensual violet fabrics inside are now faded; a stillness surrounds the emerald swimming pool, which had once been used every day. The gathering place of weekly chamber music concerts and numerous masquerade parties in the 1970s, the property is empty and quiet, as if in mourning.