Story portrayed Sappho, the Greek poet of love, as a figure of idealized beauty. Today Sappho is admired not for her appearance (no one knows what she actually looked like) but as a major figure in queer history and literature. The term “lesbian” derives from the name of the island where she lived, Lesbos. The details of her life have been obscured over time, but many of her poems express romantic desire for women. Story probably didn’t realize this subtext, as it wasn’t widely recognized in the nineteenth century.