"I called together a number of young men," she said. "I informed them of my willingness to form acquaintances, and specified to them the strict conditions to which these relationships, absolute equality, and such, would be subject."
"And what happened?" I asked.
"All withdrew politely," she said, "and I never saw them again, with one exception, a little urt of a man who told me he shared my views, fully."
"You entered into companionship with him?" I asked.
"I discovered he was interested only in my wealth," she said. "I dismissed him."
"You were then angry and hurt," I said, 'and began to devote yourself wholly to the pursuits of business."
"Yes," she said.
"Too," I said, "I gather, from other aspects of your story, that you became mercenary and greedy."
"Perhaps," she said.
"And then you were captured, and brought into the Barrens, and made a slave," I said.
"Yes," she said. "May I break this position?"
"No," I said.
"Do you like what you see?" she asked.
"You had better hope that I like what I see," I said.
She swallowed, hard.
"Yes," I said. "I like what I see."
"I suppose I should be grateful," she said.
"I think that I would be grateful if I were you," I said, "since you are a female slave."
"Of course," she said. "I do not wish to be quirted, or slain."
"Yes," I said.
"Do you enjoy posing naked women for your pleasure?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Oh," she said.
"I think you feared your womanhood," I said. "That seems clear, even from your behavior in Ar. This is not unusual, incidentally, in a free woman, because deep womanhood, they sense, involves love, and love, for a woman, seems always to involve a bondage, if not of ropes and chains, of one sort or another."
She looked at me, tears in her eyes.
"Then, when you were, in effect, rejected as a woman, you were hurt and angry. You determined never to endure another such humiliating rejection. Too, understandably, you became hostile towards men. You would hate them. You would outdo them. You would have your vengeance on them. You came to fear certain sorts of feelings. You drew back even further from your womanhood."
"No, no, no," she wept. "I am a poor slave only because I an unresponsive! That is my nature! I cannot help it!"
"That is not your nature," I told her. "And you are going to help it."
"Master?" she asked.
"Crawl to the grass, there," I said. "Hurry!"
She crawled to the point, trembling, where I had indicated.
"Kneel to the whip," I ordered her.
She knelt there, trembling, her head down to the grass, her wrists crossed beneath her, as though bound.
I strick her thrice.
"Are you a whipped slave?" I asked.
"Yes," she wept, "I am a whipped slave."
"You belong to men," I told her. I gave her another stroke.
"I will try to be pleasing!" she wept.
"I am sure you will, my dear," I said. "But the interesting question is whether or not you will succeed." I then gave her two more strokes.
"Oh," she wept. "Ohh."
"Do you beg now," I asked, "to return to the robe?"
"Yes, Master!" she said.
"Return, then, to the robe, Slave," I said.
Swiftly she crawled back to the robe. She lay on her stomach on its surface, grateful to be again within the perimeters of its relative safety. She was half choking and crying.
"On your back, Slave," I said, "hands at your sides, palms up, right knee lifted."
Wincing, she complied.
"What is the place of women!" I demanded.
"At the feet of men!" she wept.
"And where are you?" I asked.
"At your feet!" she wept.
"What are you?" I asked.
"A slave, a slave!" she said.
"Men have been patient long enough with you, Salve," I said. "That patience is now at an end."
"Yes, Master!" she wept.
"No longer are you a free woman," I said. "That is all behind you now. You are now only an imbounded female, only a slave, at the mercy of men."
"Yes, Master," she gasped, frightened.
"Accordingly," I said, "you are no longer to think of yourself as, or permit yourself to act like, a free woman. You are now, henceforth, to think and act like a slave. You are to feel as a slave, and live and love as a slave!"
"Yes, Master," she wept.
"Slave," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"No impediment exists now," I said, "between you and your womanhood."
"No, Master," she said, frightened.
I dropped the quirt down near the robe. I then crouched down beside her. "When I touch you," I said, "you will feel, deeply and fully, richly and beauitfully, gratefully, joyfully and submissively, and later, when you yield, you will yield totally and completely, irreservedly, helplessly, holding nothing back."
"But then I should be naught but a slave," she said, "helpless in the arms of her master."
"Yes," I said.
She looked at me, frightened.
I knelt beside her. "Sit up," I said. "Put your arms about my neck."
She obeyed.
"Slave lips," I commanded.
She pursed her lips and then I, gently, kissed them. "That was not so fearful now, was it?" I asked, drawing back.
"What do men, truly, want of slaves?" she whispered.
"Everything," I said.
"And what must a slave give them?" she asked.
"Everthing," I said, "and more."
"I had feared, and hoped, it would be so," she said.
I smiled.
"You see," she said, "I am a slave."
"I know," I said. She was a woman.
"Have you read the Prition of Clearchus of Cos?" she said.
"What is a former free woman of Ar doing reading that?" I asked. It was a treatise on bondage.
" 'The slave," " she quoted, " 'makes no bargains; she does not desire small demands to be placed upon her; she does not ask for ease; she asks nothing; she gives all; she seeks to love and selflessly serve. »
"You quote it well," I said.
"You have read it?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. I remembered the passage clearly. The girl had perhaps, at one tim, memorized it.
"I have always been fascinated with bondage," she said, "but I never expected, then, to find myself a slave."
"Kiss me, Slave," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Do you fear now," I asked, "as a slave, that you will be rejected?"
"I see now," she said, "as a slave, that it does not matter. It is not mine to fear such things, but rather to see to it that I am completely pleasing. If I am rejected, it matters not, for I am only a slave. As a slave I am nothing. I am meaningless and worthless. Thus what does it matter if I should be despised and spurned? I must then, only, try again, seeking anew, helplessly, to serve and love."
I did not respond to her. I did not think it necessary to tell her, and she would, in any case, soon learn it, that the least of the slave's fears is rejection. Rather she must fear quite the opposite. She must fear that the very sight of her will drive a man half mad with passion, and that he may not wish to rest until he gets his chains on her.
"In the Prition," I said, "Clearchus, of course, is primarily concerned with only one form of bondage, that of the love slave."
"That is true," she said.
"There are many slaveries," I said, "and some are doubtless quite fearful and unpleasant."
"Yes," she shuddered. she had heard, I gathered, of certain agriculteral slaveries, and of slaveries such as those in the public kitchens and laundries. Too, she was doubtless familiar with contempt slaveries and vengeance slaveries. One form of vengeance slavery is the proxy slavery, in which one woman, totally innocent, is enslaved and made to stand proxy for a hate, at-least-temporarily-inaccessibly woman, even being given her name. The proxy, of course, being enslaved, is truly enslaved. Even if the hated woman is later captured the proxy is not freed. She is generally, merely, given away or sold.