Greta Garbo, the enigmatic Hollywood film siren who said she wanted to be alone, has given the paparazzi one last slip.

Despite international press speculation that letters written by the late Swedish-born actress to her friend Mercedes de Acosta would show her to have been a lesbian, the documents unveiled on Monday at a small Philadelphia rare books museum indicated nothing of the kind. In fact, aside from salutations such as Sweetie and Honeychile , their contents expressed more sympathy than affection for de Acosta, a Spanish aristocrat turned Hollywood scriptwriter who claimed to have been Garbo's lover in the 1920s and 1930s.

“Garbo's mystery remains intact,'' great niece Gray Horan told dozens of journalists who packed an annex of the Rosenbach Museum & Library to learn what the letters had to say about the legendary film star's rumored homosexuality. “There is no concrete evidence that any sexual relationship between these two women ever existed. The letters indicate that they had a long-standing friendship, one that had its ups and downs, but one that could not be characterized as tumultuous or amorous,'' Horan added.

Even topless photos of Garbo snapped by de Acosta are likely to disappoint the voyeuristic, since they picture the actress with her back to the camera.

Garbo, who once was described as every man's fantasy, mesmerized film audiences with her Nordic beauty, sultry voice and goddess-like physique during a career that spanned 27 films from 1920 to 1941, including Flesh and the Devil' (1927), Mata Hari (1932) and Anna Karenina (1935).

As a Hollywood icon, biographers say she attained a stature shared only by the likes of Charlie Chaplin before retiring in 1941 at the age of 36.

Spaniard's Writings Spawned Rumors It was during her early fame that Garbo befriended de Acosta, who spawned rumors of a lesbian romance by writing in her memoirs that the pair bathed naked together and coped with lonely absences by writing passionate letters to each other.

Biographers believe that Garbo, whose letters cautioned de Acosta to “be a good boy'' and stop bothering her, may have had sexual encounters with women, given a mood of sexual experimentation that reigned in Hollywood at the end of the Jazz Age.

But the penciled missives she wrote to de Acosta, either in block letters or a large childlike scrawl, expressed no passion and little else aside from the actress's unhappiness with her ''ghastly profession,'' her “topsy-turvy life'' and her active travel plans. At one point, Garbo says that she and de Acosta “are the way we are'' because they were made by the same “bloody fate.'' De Acosta, who died in 1968, turned the collection of 55 Garbo letters plus cards and telegrams over to the Rosenbach in 1960 on condition that they not be opened until both women had been dead for a decade.

A private unveiling took place Saturday, the 10th anniversary of Garbo's death in New York at 84. Horan said she believes de Acosta's claims of a lesbian romance to be exaggerations, saying she knew her aunt to have been attracted to men. She quoted one Garbo letter to de Acosta as stating: “I am not the same kind of human being as you.''

In one letter, Garbo even asks de Acosta to reserve a Paris hotel room for the actress and a male companion. “Garbo's letters do reveal an intense friendship for de Acosta, but one that waxed and waned before ending altogether around 1960,'' Rosenbach Director Derick Dreher said. “Some letters are essentially brushoffs, or request what amounts to running errands for the actress. Garbo on occasion seems not even to answer questions posed by de Acosta,'' Dreher added.

Twenty-five letters were due to go on exhibit at the Rosenbach beginning Tuesday, sponsored in part by the Philadelphia-based gay rights festival, PrideFest America 2000.