The Lovers of Roissy [The Story of O]

by Pauline Reage

   Her lover one day takes O for a walk in a section of the city where they
never go--the Montsouris Park, the Monceau Park.  After they have taken a
stroll in the park and have sat together side by side on the edge of a
lawn, they notice, at one corner of the park, at an intersection where
there are never any taxis, a car which, because of its meter, resembles a
taxi.

   "Get in," he says.  She gets in.  It is autumn, and coming up to dusk.

   She is dressed as she always is: high heels, a suit with a pleated
skirt, a silk blouse and no hat.  But long gloves which come up over the
sleeves of her jacket, and in her leather handbag she has her
identification papers, her compact, and her lipstick.

   The taxi moves off slowly, the man still not having said a word to the
driver.  But he pulls down the shades of the windows on both sides of the
car, and the shade on the back window.  She has taken off her gloves,
thinking he wants to kiss her or that he wants her to caress him.  But
instead he says:

   "Your bag's in your way; let me have it."

   She gives it to him.  He puts it out of her reach and adds:

   "You also have on too many clothes.  Unfasten your stockings and roll
them down to above your knees.  Here are some garters." By now the taxi has
picked up speed and she has some trouble managing it; she's also afraid the
driver may turn around.  Finally, though, the stockings are rolled down,
and she's embarrassed to feel her legs naked and free beneath her silk
slip. Besides, the loose garter belt suspenders are slipping back and
forth.

   "Unfasten your garter belt," he says, "and take off your panties."

   That's easy enough, all she has to do is slip her hands behind her back
and raise herself slightly.  He takes the garter belt and panties from her,
opens her bag and puts them in, then says:

   "You shouldn't sit on your slip and skirt.  Pull them up behind you and
sit directly on the seat."

   The seat is made of some sort of imitation leather which is slippery and
cold: it's quite an extraordinary sensation to feel it sticking to your
thighs.

   Then he says:

   "Now put your gloves back on." The taxi is still moving along at a good
clip, and she doesn't dare ask why.  Rene just sits there without moving or
saying another word, nor can she guess what all this means to him--having
her there motionless, silent, so stripped and exposed, so thoroughly
gloved, in a black car going God knows where.

   He hasn't told her what to do or what not to do, but she's afraid either
to cross her legs or press them together.  She sits with gloved hands
braced on either side of her seat.

   "Here we are," he says suddenly.  Here we are: the taxi stops on a
lovely avenue, beneath a tree--they are plane trees--in front of some sort
of small private home which can be seen nestled between the courtyard and
the garden, the type of small private dwelling one finds along the Faubourg
Saint-Germain.  The street lamps are some distance away, and it is still
fairly dark inside the car.  Outside it is raining.

   "Don't move," Rene says.  "Sit perfectly still." His hand reaches for
the collar of her blouse, unties the bow, then unbuttons the blouse.  She
leans forward slightly, thinking he wants to fondle her breasts.  No.  He
is merely groping for the shoulder straps of her brassiere, which he snips
with a small penknife.  Then he takes it off.

   Now, beneath her blouse, which he has buttoned back up, her breasts are
naked and free, as is the rest of her body, from waist to knee.

   "Listen," he says.  "Now you're ready.  This is where I leave you. 
You're to get out and go ring the doorbell.  Follow whoever opens the door
for you, and do whatever you're told.  If you hesitate about going in,
they'll come and take you in.  If you don't obey immediately, they'll force
you to.  Your bag?  No, you have no further need for your bag.

   You're merely the girl I'm furnishing.  Yes, Of course I'll be there. 
Now run along."

   Another version of the same beginning was simpler and more direct: the
young O undressed in the same way, was given by her lover and an unknown
friend.  The stranger was driving, the lover was seated next to the young
woman, and it was the unknown friend who explained to the young woman that
her lover had been entrusted with the task of getting her ready, that he
was going to tie her hands behind her back, unfasten her stockings and roll
them down, remove her garter belt, her panties, and her brassiere, and
blindfold her.  That she would then be turned over to the chateau, where in
due course she would be instructed as to what she should do.  And, in fact,
as soon as she had been thus undressed and bound, they helped her to alight
from the car after a trip that lasted half an hour, guided her up a few
steps and, with her blindfold still on, through one or two doors.  Then,
when her blindfold was removed, she found herself standing alone in a dark
room, where they left her for half an hour, or an hour, or two hours, I
can't be sure, but it seemed forever.  Then, when at last the door was
opened and the light turned on, you could see that she had been waiting in
a very conventional, comfortable yet distinctive room: there was a thick
rug on the floor, but not a stick of furniture, and all four walls were
lined with closets.  The door had been opened by two women, two young and
beautiful women dressed in the garb of pretty eighteenth-century
chambermaids: full skirts made out of some light material, which were long
enough to conceal their feet; tight bodices, laced or hooked in front,
which sharply accentuated the bust line; lace frills around the neck;
half-length sleeves.  They were wearing eye shadow and lipstick.  Both wore
a close-fitting collar and had tight bracelets on their wrists.

   I know it was at this point that they freed O's hands, which were still
tied behind her back, and told her to get undressed, they were going to
bathe her and make her up.

   They proceeded to strip her till she hadn't a stitch of clothing left,
then put her clothes away neatly in one of the closets.  She was not
allowed to bathe herself, and they did her hair as at the hairdresser's,
making her sit in one of those large chairs which tilts back when they wash
your hair and straightens back up after the hair has been set and you're
ready for the dryer.  That always takes at least an hour.

   Actually it took more than an hour, but she was seated on this chair,
naked, and they kept her from either crossing her legs or bringing them
together.  And since the wall in front of her was covered from floor to
ceiling with a large mirror, which was unbroken by any shelving, she could
see herself, thus open, each time her gaze strayed to the mirror.

   When she was properly made up and prepared--her eyelids penciled
lightly; her lips bright red; the tip and halo of her breasts highlighted
with pink; the edges of her nether lips rouged; her armpits and pubis
generously perfumed, and perfume also applied to the furrow between her
thighs, the furrow beneath her breasts, and to the hollows of her
hands--she was led into a room where a three-sided mirror, and another
mirror behind, enabled her to examine herself closely.  She was told to sit
down on the ottoman, which was set between the mirrors, and wait.  The
ottoman was covered with black fur, which pricked her slightly; the rug was
black, the walls red.  She was wearing red mules.

   Set in one of the walls of the small bedroom was a large window, which
looked out onto a lovely, dark park.  The rain had stopped, the trees were
swaying in the wind, the moon raced high among the clouds.

   I have no idea how long she remained in the red bedroom, or whether she
was really alone, as she surmised, or whether someone was watching her
through a peephole camouflaged in the wall.  All know is that when the two
women returned, one was carrying a dressmaker's tape measure and the other
a basket.

   With them came a man dressed in a long purple robe, the sleeves of which
were gathered at the wrists and full at the shoulders.  When he walked the
robe flared open, from the waist down.  One could see that beneath his robe
he had on some sort of tights which covered his legs and thighs but left
the sex exposed.  It was the sex that O saw first, when he took his first
step, then the whip, made of leather thongs, which lie had stuck in his
belt.  Then she saw that the man was masked by a black hood which concealed
even his eyes behind a network of black gauze and, finally, that he was
also wearing fine black kid gloves.

   Using the familiar tu form of address, he told her not to move and
ordered the women to hurry.  The woman with the tape then took the
measurements of O's neck and wrists.  Though on the small side, her
measurements were in no way out of the ordinary, and it was easy enough to
find the rightsized collar and bracelets, in the basket the other woman was
carrying.  Both collar and bracelets were made of several layers of leather
(each layer being fairly thin, so that the total was no more than the
thickness of a finger).  They had clasps, which functioned automatically
like a padlock when it closes, and they could be opened only by means of a
small key.

   Imbedded in the layers of leather, directly opposite the lock, was a
snugly fitting metal ring, which allowed one to get a grip on the bracelet,
if one wanted to attach it, for both collar and bracelets fit the arms and
neck so snugly although not so tight as to be the least painful--that it
was impossible to slip any bond inside.

   So they fastened the collar and bracelets to her neck and wrists, and
the man told her to get up.  He took her place on the fur ottoman, called
her over till she was touching his knees, slipped his gloved hand between
her thighs and over her breasts, and explained to her that she would be
presented that same evening, after she had dined alone.

   She did in fact dine by herself, still naked, in a sort of little cabin
where an invisible hand passed the dishes to her through a small window in
the door.  Finally, when dinner was over, the two women came for her.  In
the bedroom, they fastened the two bracelet rings together behind her back.
They attached a long red cape to the ring of her collar and draped it over
her shoulders.  It covered her completely, but opened when she walked,
since, with her hands behind her back, she had no way of keeping it closed.
One woman preceded her, opening the doors, and the other followed, closing
them behind her.  They crossed a vestibule, two drawing rooms, and went
into the library, where four men were having coffee.  They were wearing the
same long robes as the first, but no masks.  And yet O did not have time to
see their faces or ascertain whether her lover was among them (he was), for
one of the men shone a light in her eyes and blinded her.  Everyone
remained stock still, the two women flanking her and the men in front,
studying her.  Then the light went out; the women left.

   But O was blindfolded again.  Then they made her walk forward--she
stumbled slightly as she went--until she felt that she was standing in
front of the fire around which the four men were seated: she could feel the
heat, and in the silence she could hear the quiet crackling of the burning
logs.  She was facing the fire.  Two hands lifted her cape, two
others--after having checked to see that her bracelets were
attached--descended the length of her back and buttocks.  The hands were
not gloved, and one of them penetrated her in both places at once, so
abruptly that she cried out.

   Someone laughed.  Someone else said:

   "Turn her around, so we can see the breasts and the belly." They turned
her around, and the heat of the fire was against her back.  A hand seized
one of her breasts, a mouth fastened on the tip of the other.  But suddenly
she lost her balance and fell backward (supported by whose arms?), while
they opened her legs and gently spread her lips.  Hair grazed the insides
of her thighs.  She heard them saying that they would have to make her
kneel down.  This they did.  She was extremely uncomfortable in this
position, especially because they forbade her to bring her knees together
and because her arms pinioned behind her forced her to lean forward.  Then
they let her rock back a bit, so that she was half-sitting on her heels, as
nuns are wont to do.

   "You've never tied her up?

   "No, never."

   "And never whipped her?"

   "No, never whipped her either.  But as a matter of fact..." It was her
lover speaking.

   "As a matter of fact," the other voice went on, "if you do tie her up
from time to time, or whip her just a little, and she begins to like it,
that's no good either.  You have to get past the pleasure stage, until you
reach the stage of tears."

   Then they made O get up and were on the verge of untying her, probably
in order to attach her to some pole or wall, when someone protested that he
wanted to take her first, right there on the spot.  So they made her kneel
down again, this time with her bust on an ottoman, her hands still tied
behind her, with her hips higher than her torso.  Then one of the men,
holding her with both his hands on her hips, plunged into her belly.  He
yielded to a second.  The third wanted to force his way into the narrower
passage and, driving hard, made her scream.  When he let her go, sobbing
and befouled by tears beneath her blindfold, she slipped to the floor, only
to feel someone's knees against her face, and she realized that her mouth
was not to be spared.  Finally they let her go, a captive clothed in tawdry
finery, lying on her back in front of the fire.  She could hear glasses
being filled and the sound of the men drinking, and the scraping of chairs.
They put some more wood on the fire.

   All of a sudden they removed her blindfold.  The large room, the walls
of which were lined with bookcases, was dimly lit by a single wall lamp and
by the light of the fire, which was beginning to burn more brightly.  Two
of the men were standing and smoking.

   Another was seated, a riding crop on his knees, and the one leaning over
her fondling her breast was her lover.  All four of them had taken her, and
she had not been able to distinguish him from the others.

   They explained to her that this was how it would always be, as long as
she was in the chateau, that she would see the faces of those who violated
or tormented her, but never at night, and she would never know which ones
had been responsible for the worst.  The same would be true when she was
whipped, except that they wanted her to see herself being whipped, and so
this once she would not be blindfolded.

   They, on the other hand, would don their masks, and she would no longer
be able to tell them apart.

   Her lover had helped her to her feet, still wrapped in her red cape,
made her sit down on the arm of an easy chair near the fire, so that she
could hear what they had to tell her and see what they wanted to show her.
Her hands were still behind her back.  They showed her the riding crop,
which was long, black, and delicate, made of thin bamboo encased in
leather, the kind one sees in the windows of better riding equipment shops;
the leather whip, which the first man she had seen had been carrying in his
belt, was long and consisted of six lashes knotted at the end.  There was a
third whip of fairly thin cords, each with several knots at the end: the
cords were quite stiff, as though they had been soaked in water, which in
fact they had, as O discovered, for they caressed her belly with them and
nudged open her thighs, so that she could feel how stiff and damp the cords
were against the tender, inner skin.  Then there were the keys and the
steel chains on the console table.  Along one entire wall of the library,
halfway between floor and ceiling, ran a gallery which was supported by two
columns.  A hook was imbedded in one of them, just high enough for a man
standing on tiptoe, with his arms stretched above his head, to reach.  They
told O, whose lover had taken her in his arms, with one hand supporting her
shoulders, and the other in the furrow of her loins, which burned so she
could hardly bear it, they told her that her hands would be untied, but
merely so that they could be fastened anew, a short while later, to the
pole, using these same bracelets and one of the steel chains.

   They said that, with the exception of her hands, which would be held
just above her head, she would thus be able to move and see the blows
coming: that in principle she would be whipped only on the thighs and
buttocks, in other words between her waist and knees, in the same region
which had been prepared in the car that had brought her here, when she had
been made to sit naked on the seat; but that in all likelihood one of the
four men present would want to mark her thighs with the riding crop, which
makes lovely long deep welts which last a long time.  She would not have to
endure all this at once; there would be ample time for her to scream, to
struggle, and to cry.  They would grant her some respite, but as soon as
she had caught her breath they would start in again, judging the results
not from her screams or tears but from the size and color of the welts they
had raised.  They remarked to her that this method of judging the
effectiveness of the whip--besides being equitable--also made it pointless
for the victims to exaggerate their suffering in an effort to arouse pity,
and thus enabled them to resort to the same measures beyond the chateau
wails, outdoors in the park--as was often done--or in any ordinary
apartment or hotel room, assuming a gag was used (such as the one they
produced and showed her there on the spot), for the gag stifles all screams
and eliminates all but the most violent moans, while allowing tears to flow
without restraint.

   There was no question of using it that night.  On the contrary, they
wanted to hear her scream; and the sooner the better.  The pride she
mustered to resist and remain silent did not long endure: they even heard
her beg them to untie her, to stop for a second, just for a second.  So
frantically did she writhe, trying to escape the bite of the lashes, that
she turned almost completely around, on the near side of the pole, for the
chain which held her was long and, although quite solid, was fairly slack.
As a result, her belly and the front of her thighs were almost as marked as
her backside.

   They made up their minds, after in fact having stopped for a moment, to
begin again only after a rope had been attached first to her waist, then to
the pole.  Since they tied her tightly, to keep her waist snug to the pole,
her torso was forced slightly to one side, and this in turn caused her
buttocks to protrude in the opposite direction.  From then on the blows
landed on their target, unless aimed deliberately elsewhere.  Given the way
her lover had handed her over, had delivered her into this situation, O
might have assumed that to beg him for mercy would have been the surest
method for making him redouble his cruelty, so great was his pleasure in
extracting, or having the others extract, from her this unquestionable
proof of his power.  And indeed he was the first to point out that the
leather whip, the first they had used on her, left almost no marks (in
contrast to the whip made of water-soaked cords, which marked almost upon
contact, and the riding crop, which raised immediate welts), and thus
allowed them to prolong the agony and follow their fancies in starting and
stopping.  He asked them to use only the leather whip.

   Meanwhile, the man who liked women only for what they had in common with
men, seduced by the available behind which was straining at the bonds
knotted just below the waist, a behind made all the more enticing by its
efforts to dodge the blows, called for an intermission in order to take
advantage of it.  He spread the two parts, which burned beneath his hands,
and penetrated--not without some difficulty--remarking as he did that the
passage would have to be rendered more easily accessible.  They all agreed
that this could, and would, be done.

   When they untied the young woman, she staggered and almost fainted,
draped in her red cape.  Before returning her to the cell she was to
occupy, they sat her down in an armchair near the fire and outlined for her
the rules and regulations she was to follow during her stay in the chateau
and later in her daily life after she had left it (which did not mean
regaining her freedom, however).  Then they rang.  The two young women who
had first received her came in, bearing the clothes she was to wear during
her stay and tokens by which those who had been hosts at the chateau before
her arrival and those who would be after she had left, might recognize her.
Her outfit was similar to theirs: a long dress with a full skirt, worn over
a sturdy whalebone bodice gathered tightly at the waist, and over a stiffly
starched linen petticoat.  The low-cut neck scarcely concealed the breasts
which, raised by the constricting bodice, were only lightly veiled by the
network of lace.  The petticoat was white, as was the lace, and the dress
and bodice were a sea-green satin.  When O was dressed and resettled in her
chair beside the fire, her pallor accentuated by the color of the dress,
the two young women, who had not uttered a word, prepared to leave.  One of
the four friends seized one of them as she passed, made a sign for the
other to wait, and brought the girl he had stopped back toward O.  He
turned her around and, holding her by the waist with one hand, lifted her
skirt with the other, in order to demonstrate to O, he said, the practical
advantages of the costume and show how well designed it was.  He added that
all one needed to keep the skirts raised was a simple belt, which made
everything that lay beneath readily available.  In fact, they often had the
girls go about in the chateau or the park either like this, or with their
skirts tucked up in front, waist high.  They had the young woman show O how
she would have to keep her skirt: rolled up several turns (like a lock of
hair rolled in a curler) and secured tightly by a belt, either directly in
front, to expose the belly, or in the middle of the back, to leave the
buttocks free.  In either case, skirt and petticoat fell diagonally away in
large, cascading folds of intermingled material.  Like O, the young woman's
backside bore fresh welts from the riding crop.  She left the room.

   Here is the speech they then delivered to O:

   "You are here to serve your masters.  During the day, you will perform
whatever domestic duties are assigned you, such as sweeping, putting back
the books, arranging flowers, or waiting on table.

   Nothing more difficult than that.  Put at the first word or sign from
anyone you will drop whatever you are doing and ready yourself for what is
really your one and only duty: to lend yourself.  Your hands are not your
own, nor are your breasts, nor, most especially, any of your bodily
orifices, which we may explore or penetrate at will.  You will remember at
all times--or as constantly as possible--that you have lost all right to
privacy or concealment, and as a reminder of this fact, in our presence you
will never close your lips completely, or cross your legs, or press your
knees together (you may recall you were forbidden to do this the minute you
arrived).  This will serve as a constant reminder, to you as well as to us,
that your mouth, your belly, and your backside are open to us.  You will
never touch your breasts in our presence: the bodice raises them toward us,
that they may be ours.

   During the day you will therefore be dressed, and if anyone should order
you to lift your skirt, you will lift it; if anyone desires to use you in
any manner whatsoever, he will use you, unmasked, but with this one
reservation: the whip.  The whip will be used only between dusk and dawn.
But besides the whipping you receive from whomever may want to whip you,
you will also be flogged in the evening, as punishment for any infractions
of the rules committed during the day: for having been slow to oblige, for
having raised your eyes and looked at the person addressing you or taking
you--you must never look any of us in the face.  If the costume we wear in
the evening--the one I am now wearing--leaves our sex exposed, it is not
for the sake of convenience, for it would be just as convenient the other
way, but for the sake of insolence, so that your eyes will be directed
there upon it and nowhere else, so that you may learn that there resides
your master, for whom, above all else, your lips are intended.  During the
day, when we are dressed in normal attire and you are clothed as you are
now, the same rules will apply, except that when requested you will open
your clothes, and then close them again when we have finished with you.

   Another thing: at night you will have only your lips with which to honor
us: and your widespread thighs--for your hands will be tied behind your
back and you will be naked, as you were a short while ago.  You will be
blindfolded only to be maltreated and, now that you have seen how you are
whipped, to be flogged.  And yes, by the way: while it is perfectly all
right for you to grow accustomed to being whipped--since you are going to
be every day throughout your stay--this is less for our pleasure than for
your enlightenment.  How true this is may be shown by the fact that on
those nights when no one desires you, you will wait until the valet whose
job it is comes to your solitary cell and administers what you are due to
receive but we are not in the mood to mete out.  Actually, both this
flogging and the chain--which when attached to the ring of your collar
keeps you more or less closely confined to your bed several hours a
day--are intended less to make you suffer, scream, or shed tears than to
make you feel, through this suffering, that you are not free but fettered,
and to teach you that you are totally dedicated to something outside
yourself.  When you leave here, you will be wearing on your third finger an
iron ring, which will identify you.  By then you will have learned to obey
those who wear the same insignia, and when they see it they will know that
beneath your skirt you are constantly naked, however comely or commonplace
your clothes may be, and that this nakedness is for them.

   Should anyone find you in the least intractable, he will return you
here.

   Now you will be shown to your cell."

   While they were talking to O, the two women who had come to dress her
had been standing on either side of the stake where she had been whipped,
without touching it, as though it terrified them, or as though they bad
been forbidden to touch it (which was more likely); when the man had
finished, they came over to O, who realized that she was supposed to get up
and follow them.  She therefore got up, gathering her skirts in her arms to
keep from tripping, for she was not used to long dresses and did not feel
steady on the mules with thick soles and very high heels which only a thick
satin strap, of the same green as her dress, kept from slipping off her
feet As she bent down she turned her head.  The women were waiting, the men
were no longer looking at her.  Her lover, seated on the floor leaning
against the ottoman over which she had been thrown at the beginning of the
evening, with his knees raised and his elbows on his knees, was toying with
the leather whip.  As she took her first step to join the women, her skirt
grazed him.

   He raised his head and smiled, calling her by her name, and he too stood
up.

   Softly he caressed her hair, smoothed her eyebrows with the tip of his
finger, and softly kissed her on the lips.  In a loud voice, he told her
that he loved her.  O, trembling, was terrified to notice that she answered
"I love you,' and that it was true.  He pulled her against him and said:
"Darling, sweetheart," kissed her on the neck and the curve of the cheek;
she had let her head fall on his shoulder, which was covered by the purple
robe.  Very softly this time he repeated to her that he loved her, and very
softly added: "You're going to kneel down, caress me, and kiss me," and he
pushed her away, signaling to the women to move aside so he could lean back
against the console.  He was tall, but the table was not very high and his
long legs, sheathed in the same purple as his robe, were bent.  The open
robe stiffened from beneath like drapes, and the top of the console table
slightly raised his heavy sex and the light fleece above it.  The three men
approached.  O knelt down on the rug, her green dress in a corolla around
her.

   Her bodice squeezed her; her breasts, whose nipples were visible, were
at the level of her lover's knees.  "A little more light," said one of the
men.

   As they were adjusting the lamp so that the beam of light would fall
directly on his sex and on his mistress's face, which was almost touching
it, and on her hands which were caressing him from below, Rene suddenly
ordered: "Say it again: I love you."

   O repeated "I love you," with such delight that her lips hardly dared
brush the tip of his sex, which was still protected by its sheath of soft
flesh.

   The three men, who were smoking, commented on her gestures, on the
movement of her mouth closed and locked on the sex she had seized, as it
worked its way up and down, on the way tears streamed down her ravaged face
each time the swollen member struck the back of her throat and made her
gag, depressing her tongue and causing her to feel nauseous.  It was this
same mouth which, half gagging on the hardened flesh which filled it,
murmured again: "I love you." The two women had taken up positions to the
right and left of Rene, who had one arm around each of their shoulders.  O
could hear the comments made by those present, but through their words she
strained to hear her lover's moans, caressing him carefully, slowly, and
with infinite respect, the way she knew pleased him.  O felt that her mouth
was beautiful, since her lover condescended to thrust himself into it,
since he deigned publicly to offer caresses to it, since, finally, he
deigned to discharge in it.  She received it as a god is received, she
heard him cry out, heard the others laugh, and when she had received it she
fell, her face against the floor.  The two women picked her up, and this
time they led her away.

   The mules banged on the red tiles of the hallway, where doors succeeded
doors, discreet and clean, with tiny locks, like the doors of the rooms in
big hotels.  O was working up the courage to ask whether each of these
rooms was occupied, and by whom, when one of her companions, whose voice
she had not yet heard, said to her:

   "You're in the red wing, and your valet's name is Pierre.  "What valet?"
said O, struck by the gentleness of the Voice.  "And what's your name?"

   "Andree."

   "Mine is Jeanne," said the second.

   "The valet is the one who has the keys," the first one went on, "the one
who will chain and unchain you, who will whip you when you are to be
punished and when the others have no time for you.

   "I was in the red wing last year," Jeanne said.  "Pierre was there
already.  He often came in at night.  The valets have the keys and the
right to use any of us in the rooms of their section."

   O was about to ask what kind of a person this Pierre was, but she did
not have time to.  As they turned a corner of the hallway, they made her
halt before a door similar in all respects to the others: on a bench
between this and the following door she noticed a sort of thick-set, ruddy
peasant, whose head was practically clean shaved, with small black eyes set
deep in his skull and rolls of flesh on his neck.  He was dressed like the
valet in some operetta: a shirt whose lace frills peeked out from beneath
his black vest, which itself was covered by a red jacket of the kind called
a Spencer.  He had black breeches, white stockings, and patent-leather
pumps.  He too was carrying a leather-thonged whip in his belt.  His hands
were covered with red hair.  He took a master key from his vest pocket,
opened the door, ushered the three women in, and said:

   "I'm locking the door.  Ring when you've finished."

   The cell was quite small, and actually consisted of two rooms.  With the
hall door closed, they found themselves in an antechamber which opened into
the cell proper; in this same wall, inside the room itself, was another
door which opened into the bathroom.  Opposite the doors there was the
window.

   Against the left wall, between the doors and the window, stood the head
of a large square bed, which was very low and covered with furs.  There was
no other furniture, no mirror.  The walls were bright red, and the rug
black.

   Andree pointed out to O that the bed was less a bed than a mattressed
platform covered with a black, long-haired imitation fur material.  The
pillow, hard and flat like the mattress, was of the same reversible
material.  The only object on any of the walls was a thick, gleaming steel
ring which was set at about the same height above the bed as the hook in
the stake had been above the floor of the library; from it descended a long
steel chain directly onto the bed, its links forming a little pile, the
other end being attached at arm's length to a pad-locked hook, like a
drapery pulled back and held in place by a curtain loop.

   We have to give you your bath," Jeanne said.  "I'll unfasten your
dress."

   The only peculiar features of the bathroom were the Turkish-type toilet,
located in the corner nearest the door, and the fact that every inch of
wall space was covered with mirrors.  Jeanne and Andree did not allow O to
go in until she was naked.  They put her dress away in the closet next to
the washbasin, where her mules and red cape already were, and remained with
her, so that when she had to squat down over the porcelain pedestal she
found herself surrounded by a whole host of reflections, as exposed as in
the library when unknown hands had taken her by force.

   "Wait until it's Pierre," said Jeanne, "and you'll see."

   "Why Pierre?"

   "When he comes to chain you, he may make you squat." O felt herself turn
pale.

   "But why?" she said.

   "Because you have to," Jeanne replied.  "But you're lucky."

   "Why lucky?"

   "Was it your lover who brought you here?"

   "Yes," O said.

   "They'll be a lot harder with you."

   "I don't understand."

   "You will very soon.  I'm ringing for Pierre.  We'll come and get you
tomorrow morning."

   Andree smiled as she left and Jeanne, before following her, caressed the
tips of O's breasts.  O, completely taken aback, remained standing at the
foot of the bed.  With the exception of the collar and leather bracelets,
which the water had stiffened when she had bathed and were tighter than
before, O was naked.

   "Behold the lovely lady," said the valet as he entered.  And he seized
both her hands.  He slipped one of the bracelet hooks into the other, so
that her wrists were tightly joined, then clipped both these hooks to the
ring of the necklace.  Thus her hands were joined as in an attitude of
prayer, at the level of her neck.  All that remained to be done was to
chain her to the wall with the chain that was lying on the bed and was
attached to the ring above.  He unfastened the hook by which the other end
was attached and pulled on it in order to shorten it.  O was forced to move
to the head of the bed, where he made her lie down.  The chain clicked in
the ring, and was so tight that the young woman could do no more than move
from one side of the bed to the other or stand up on either side of the
headboard.  Since the chain tended to shorten the collar, that is, pull it
backward, and her hands tended to pull it forward, an equilibrium was
established, with her joined hands lying on her left shoulder and her head
bending in that direction as well.  The valet pulled the black cover up
over O, but not before he had lifted her legs for a moment and pushed them
back toward her chest, to examine the cleft between her thighs.  He did not
touch her further, did not say a word, turned out the light, which was a
bracket lamp on the wall between the two doors, and went out.

   Lying on her left side, alone in the darkness and silence, hot beneath
her two layers of fur, of necessity motionless, O tried to figure out why
there was so much sweetness mingled with the terror in her, or why her
terror seemed itself so sweet.  She realized that one of the things that
most distressed her was the fact that she had been deprived of the use of
her hands; not that her hands could have defended her (and did she really
want to defend herself?), but had they been free they would at least have
made the gesture, have made an attempt to repel the hands which seized her,
the flesh which pierced her, to protect her loins from the whip.  O's hands
had been taken away from her; her body beneath the fur was inaccessible to
her.

   How strange it was not to be able to touch one's own knees, or the
hollow of one's own belly.  The lips between her legs, her burning lips
were forbidden her, and perhaps they were burning because she knew they
were open to the first comer: to the valet Pierre, if he cared to enter. 
She was surprised that the whipping she had received had left her so
untroubled, so calm, whereas the thought that she would probably.  never
know which of the four men had twice taken her from behind, and whether it
was the same man both times, and whether it had been her lover, quite
distressed her.  She turned over slightly on her stomach, recalling that
her lover loved the furrow between her buttocks which, except for this
evening (if it had been he), he had never penetrated.  She hoped it had
been he; would she ask him?  Ah, never!  Again she saw the hand which in
the car had taken her garter belt and panties, and had stretched the
garters so that she could roll her stockings down to above her knees.

   Her memory was so vivid that she forgot her hands were bound and made
the chain grate.  And why, if she took the memory of the torture she had
gone through so lightly, why did the very idea, the very word or sight of a
whip make her heart beat wildly and her eyes close with terror?  She did
not stop to consider whether it was only terror; she was overwhelmed with
panic: they would pull on her chain and haul her to her feet on the bed,
and they would whip her, with her belly glued to the wall they would whip
her, whip her, the word kept turning in her head, Pierre would whip her,
Jeanne had said he would.  You're lucky, Jeanne had repeated, they'll be a
lot harder on you.

   What had she meant by that?  She no longer felt anything but the collar,
the bracelets, and the chain; her body was drifting away.  She fell asleep.

   In the wee hours of the night, just before dawn when it is darkest and
coldest, Pierre reappeared.  He turned on the light in the bathroom,
leaving the door open so that a square of light fell on the middle of the
bed, on the spot where O's slender body was curled, making a small mound
beneath the cover, which silently he pulled back.  Since O was sleeping on
her left side, her face to the window and her legs slightly drawn up, the
view she offered him was that of her white flanks, which seemed even whiter
against the black fur.  He took the pillow from beneath her head and said
politely: "Would you please stand up," and when she was on her knees, a
position she managed by pulling herself up with the chain, he gave her a
hand, taking her by the elbows so that she could stand up straight with her
face to the wall.  The square of light on the bed, which was faint, since
the bed was black, illuminated her body, but not his gestures.  She
guessed, but could not see, that he was undoing the chain to rehook it to
another link, so that it would remain taut, and she could feel it growing
tighter.  Her feet, which were bare, were solidly planted on the bed.  Nor
was she able to see that he had in his belt not the leather whip but the
black riding crop similar to the one they had hit her with while she was
tied to the stake, but they had only used it twice on her and had not hit
her hard.  She felt Pierre's left hand on her waist, the gave a little as,
to steady himself, he put his right foot on it.  At the same time as she
heard a whistling noise in the semidarkness O felt a terrible burning
across her back, and she screamed.

   Pierre flogged her with all his might.  He did not wait for her screams
to subside, but struck her again four times, being careful each time to
lash her above or below the preceding spot, so that the traces would be all
the clearer.  Even after he had stopped she went on screaming, and the
tears streamed down into her open mouth.

   "Please be good enough to turn around," he said, and since she, who was
completely distracted, failed to obey, he took her by the hips without
letting go of his riding crop, the handle of which brushed against her
waist.

   When she was facing him, he moved back slightly and lowered his crop on
the front of her thighs as hard as he could.  The whole thing had lasted
five minutes.  When he had left, after having turned out the light and
closed the bathroom door, O was left moaning in the darkness, swaying back
and forth along the wall at the end of her chain.  She tried to stop
moaning and to immobilize herself against the wall, whose gleaming percale
was cool on her tortured flesh, as day slowly began to break.  The tall
window toward which she was turned, for she was leaning on one hip, was
facing the east.  It extended from floor to ceiling and, except for the
drapes--of the same red material as that on the wall--which graced it on
either side and split into stiff folds below the curtain loops which held
it, had no curtains.  O watched the slow birth of pale dawn, trailing its
mist along the clusters of asters outside at the foot of her window, until
finally a poplar tree appeared.  The yellow leaves from time to time fell
in swirls, although there was no wind.  In front of the window, beyond the
bed of purple asters, there was a lawn, at the end of which was a pathway.
It was broad daylight by now, and O had not moved for a long time.  A
gardener appeared on the path, pushing a wheelbarrow.  The iron wheel could
be heard squeaking over the gravel.  If he had come over to rake the leaves
that had fallen in among the asters, the window was so tall and the room so
small and bright that he would have seen O chained and naked, and the marks
of the riding crop on her thighs.  The cuts were swollen, and had formed
narrow' swellings much darker in color than the red of the walls.  Where
was her lover sleeping, the way he loved to sleep on quiet mornings?  In
what room, in what bed?  Was he aware of the pain, the tortures to which he
had delivered her?  Was he the one who had decided what they would be?  O
recalled the prisoners she had seen in engravings and in history books, who
also had been chained and whipped many years ago, centuries ago, and had
died.  She did not wish to die, but if torture was the price she had to pay
to keep her love's love, then she only hoped he was pleased that she had
endured it.  All soft and silent she waited, waited for them to bring her
back to him.

   None of the women had the keys to any locks, neither the locks to the
doors nor the chains, the collars or bracelets, but every man carried a
ring of three sets of keys, each of which, in the various categories,
opened all the doors or all the padlocks, or all the collars.  The valets
had them too.  But in the morning the valets who had been on the night
shift were sleeping, and it was one of the masters or another valet who
came to open the locks.  The man who came into O's cell was dressed in a
leather jacket and was wearing riding breeches and boots.  She did not
recognize him.

   First he unlocked the chain on the wall, and O was able to lie down on
the bed.  Before he unlocked her wrists, he ran his hand between her
thighs, the way the first man with mask and gloves, whom she had seen in
the small red drawing room, had done.  It may have been the same one.  His
face was bony and fleshless, with that piercing look one associates with
the portraits of old Huguenots, and his hair was gray.  O met his gaze for
what seemed to be an endless time and, suddenly freezing, she remembered it
was forbidden to look at the masters above, the belt.  She closed her eyes,
but it was too late, and she heard him laugh and say, as he finally freed
her hands:

   "There will be a punishment for that after dinner."

   He said something to Jeanne and Andree, who had come in with him and
were standing waiting on either side of the bed, after which he left. 
Andree picked up the pillow which was on the floor, and the blanket that
Pierre had turned down toward the foot of the bed when he had come to whip
O, while Jeanne wheeled, toward the head of the bed, a serving table which
had been brought into the hallway and on which were coffee, mill;, sugar,
bread, croissants, and butter.

   "Hurry up and eat," said Andree.  "It's nine o'clock.  Afterward you can
sleep till noon, and when you hear the bell it will be time to get ready
for lunch.  You'll bathe and fix your hair.  I'll come to make you up and
lace up your bodice."

   "You won't be on duty till afternoon," Jeanne said.  "In the library:
you'll serve the coffee and liqueur and tend the fire."

   "And what about you??  O said.

   "We're only supposed to take care of you during the first twenty-four
hours of your stay.  After that you're on your own, and will have dealings
only with the men.  We won't be able to talk to you, and you won't be able
to talk to us either'

   "Don't go;' O said.  "Stay a while longer and tell me..." Put she did
not have time to finish her sentence.  The door opened: it was her lover,
and he was not alone.  It was her lover, dressed the way he used to when he
had just gotten out of bed and lighted the first cigarette of the day: in
striped pajamas and a blue dressing gown, the wool robe with the padded
silk lapels which they had picked out together a year before.  And his
slippers were worn, she would have to buy him another pair.  The two women
disappeared, with no other sound except the rustling of silk as they lifted
their skirts (all the skirts were a trifle long and trailed on the
ground)--on the carpet the mules could not be heard.

   O, who was holding a cup of coffee in her left hand and a croissant in
the other, was seated cross-legged, or rather half-cross-legged, on the
edge of the bed, one of her legs dangling and the other tucked up under
her. She did not move, but her cup suddenly began to shake in her hand, and
she dropped the croissant.

   "Pick it up, Rene said.  They were his first words. .  She put the cup
down on the table, picked up the partly eaten croissant, and put it beside
the cup.  A fat croissant crumb still lay on the rug, beside her bare foot.

   This time Rene bent down and picked it up.  Then he sat down near O,
pulled her back down onto the bed, and kissed her.  She asked him if he
loved her.

   He answered: "Yes, I love you!" then got to his feet and made her stand
up too, softly running the cool palms of his hands, then his lips, over the
welts.

   Since he had come in with her lover, O did not know whether or not she
could look at the man who had entered with him and who, for the moment, had
his back to them and was smoking a cigarette near the door.  What followed
was not of a nature to reassure her.

   "Come over here so we can see you," her lover said, and having guided
her to the foot of the bed, he pointed out to his companion that he had
been right, and he thanked him, adding that it would only be fair for him
to take O first if he so desired.

   The unknown man, whom she still did not dare to look at, then asked her,
after having run his hand over her breasts and down her buttocks, to spread
her legs.

   "Do as he says," said Rene, who was holding her up.  He too was
standing, and her back was against him.  With his right hand he was
caressing one breast and his other was on her shoulder.  The unknown man
had sat down on the edge of the bed, he had seized and slowly parted,
drawing the fleece, the lips which protected the entrance itself.  Rene
pushed her forward, as soon as he realized what was wanted from her, so
that she would be more accessible, and his right arm Slipped around her
waist, giving him a better grip.

   This caress, to which she never submitted without a struggle and which
always filled her with shame, and from which she escaped as quickly as she
could, so quickly in fact that she had scarcely had a chance to be touched,
this caress which seemed a sacrilege to her, for she deemed it sacrilege
for her lover to be on his knees, feeling that she should be on hers, she
suddenly felt that she would not escape from it now', and she saw herself
doomed For she moaned when the alien lips, which were pressing upon the
mound of flesh whence the inner corolla emanates, suddenly inflamed her,
left her to allow the hot tip of the tongue to inflame her even more; she
moaned even more when the lips began again: she felt the hidden point
harden and rise, that point caught in a long, sucking bite between teeth
and lips, which did not let go, a long, soothing bite which made her gasp
for breath She lost her footing and found herself again lying on the bed,
with Rene's mouth on her mouth; his two hands were pinning her shoulders to
the bed, while two other hands beneath her knees were raising and opening
her legs.

   Her own hands, which were beneath her back (for when Rene had propelled
her toward the unknown man he had bound her wrists together by clipping the
wristbands together), were grazed by the sex of the man who was caressing
himself in the furrow of her buttocks before rising to strike hard into the
depths of her belly.  At the first stroke she cried out, as though it had
been the lash of a whip, then again at each new stroke, and her lover bit
her mouth.  The man tore himself abruptly away from her and fell back on
the floor, as though struck by lightning, and he too gave a cry.

   Rene freed O's hands, lifted her up, and lay her down beneath the
blanket on the bed.  The man got up, Rene escorted him to the door.  In a
flash, O saw herself released, reduced to nothing, accursed.  She had
moaned beneath the lips of the stranger as never her lover had made her
moan, cried out under the impact of a stranger's member as never her lover
had made her cry out.

   She felt debased and guilty.  She could not blame him if he were to
leave her.

   But no, the door was closing again, he was staying with her, he was
coming back, lying down beside her beneath the cover, he was slipping into
her moist, hot belly and, still holding her in this embrace, he said to
her:

   "I love you.  When I'll also have given you to the valets, I'll come in
one night and have you flogged till you bleed."

   The sun had broken through the mist and flooded the room.  But only the
midday bell woke them up.

   O was at a loss what to do.  Her lover was there, as close, as tenderly
relaxed and surrendered as he was in the bed in that low-ceilinged room to
which, almost every night since they had begun living together, he came to
sleep with her.  It was a big, mahogany, English-style four-poster bed,
without the awning, and the posters at the head were taller than those at
the foot.  He always slept on her left, and whenever he awoke, even were it
in the middle of the night, his hands inevitably reached down for her legs.

   This is why she never wore anything but a nightgown or, if she had on
pajamas never put on the bottoms.  He did so now; she took that hand and
kissed it, without ever daring to ask him for anything.  But he spoke.

   Holding her by the collar, with two fingers slipped in between the neck
and collar, lie told her it was his intention that henceforth she should be
shared by him and those of his choosing, and by those whom he did not know
who were connected to the society of the chateau, shared as she had been
the previous evening.  That she was dependent on him, and on him alone,
even though she might receive orders from persons other than himself,
whether he was present or absent, for as a matter of principle he was
participating in whatever might be demanded of or inflicted on her, and
that it was he who possessed and enjoyed her through those into whose hands
she had been given, by the simple fact that he had given her to them.  She
must greet them and submit to them with the same respect with which she
greeted him, as though they were so many reflections of him.  Thus he would
possess her as a god possesses his creatures, whom he lays hold of in the
guise of a monster or a bird, of an invisible spirit or a state of ecstasy.

   He did not wish to leave her.  The more he surrendered her, the more he
would hold her dear.  The fact that he gave her was to him a proof, and
ought to be one for her as well, that she belonged to him: one can only
give what belongs to you.

   He gave her only to reclaim her immediately, to reclaim her enriched in
his eyes, like some common object which had been used for some divine
purpose and has thus been consecrated.  For a long time he had wanted to
prostitute her, and he was delighted to feel that the pleasure he was
deriving was even greater than he had hoped, and that it bound him to her
all the more, as it bound her to him, all the more so because, through it,
she would be more humiliated and ravaged.  Since she loved him, she could
not help loving whatever derived from him.  O listened and trembled with
happiness, because he loved her, all acquiescent she trembled.  He
doubtless guessed it, for he went on:

   "It's because it's easy for you to consent that I want from you what it
will be impossible for you to consent to, even if you agree ahead of time,
even if you say yes now and imagine yourself capable of submitting.  You
won't be able not to revolt.

   Your submission will be obtained in spite of you, not only for the
inimitable pleasure that I and others will derive from it, but also so that
you will be made aware of what has been done to you.

   O was on the verge of saying that she was his slave and that she bore
her bonds cheerfully.  He stopped her.

   "Yesterday you were told that as long as you are in the chateau you are
not to look a man in the face or speak to him.  The same applies to me as
well: with me you shall remain silent and obey.  I love you.  Now get up.

   From now on the only times you will open your mouth here in the presence
of a man will be to cry out or to caress.

   So O got up.  Rene remained lying on the bed.  She bathed and arranged
her hair.  The contact of her bruised loins with the tepid water made her
shiver, and she had to sponge herself without rubbing to keep from reviving
the burning pain.  She made up her mouth but not her eyes, powdered herself
and, still naked but with lowered eyes, came back into the room.

   Rene was looking at Jeanne, who had come in and was standing at the head
of the bed, she too with her head bowed, unspeaking.  He told her to dress
O.

   Jeanne took the bodice of green satin, the white petticoat, the dress,
the green mules and, having hooked up O's bodice in front, began to lace it
up tight in the back.  The bodice was long and stiff, stoutly whaleboned as
during the period when wasp waists were in style, with gussets to support
the breasts.  The more the bodice was tightened, the more the breasts were
lifted, supported as they were by the gussets, and the nipples displayed
more prominently.  At the same time, the constriction of the waist caused
her stomach to protrude and her backside to arch out sharply.  The strange
thing was that this armor was very comfortable and to a certain extent
restful.

   It made you stand up very straight, but it made you realize why, it was
hard to tell unless it was by contrast--the freedom, or rather the
availability, of that part of the body left unrestricted.  The full skirt
and the trapezoidshaped neckline running from the base of the neck to the
tips of the breasts and across the full length of the bosom, seemed to the
girl to be less a protective outfit than an instrument designed to provoke
or present.  When Jeanne had tied the laces in a double knot, O took her
dress from the bed.  It was a one-piece dress, with the petticoat attached
to the skirt like a detachable lining, and the bodice, cross-laced in front
and tied in the back, was thus able to follow more or less the delicate
contours of her bosom, depending on how tightly the bodice was laced Jeanne
had laced it very tight' and through the open door O was able to see
herself reflected In the bathroom mirror, slim and lost in the green satin
which billowed at her hips, as a hoop skirt would have done.  The two women
were standing side by side.  Jeanne reached out to smooth a wrinkle in the
green dress, and her breasts stirred in the lace fringes of her bodice,
breasts whose tips were long and the halos brown.

   Her dress was of yellow faille.

   Rene, who had come over to the two women, said to O: "Watch." And to
Jeanne: "lift your dress With both hands she raised the crackling silk and
the crinoline which lined it, revealing as she did a golden belly, gleaming
thighs and knees, and a tight black triangle.  Rene put his hand on it and
slowly explored, and with the other excited the nipple of one breast,
Merely so you can see," he said to O.

   O saw.  She saw his ironic but attentive face, his eyes carefully
watching Jeanne's half-open mouth and her neck, which was thrown back,
tightly circled by the leather collar.  What pleasure was she giving him,
yes she, that this girl or any other could not?

   "That hadn't occurred to you?" he added.

   No, that had not occurred to her.  She had collapsed against the wall,
between the two doors, her arms hanging limp.  There was no longer any need
to tell her to keep quiet.  How could she have spoken?  Perhaps he was
touched by her despair.  He left Jeanne and took her in his arms, calling
her his love and his life, saying over and over again that he loved her. 
The hand he was caressing her neck with was moist with the odor of Jeanne.
And so?  The despair which had overwhelmed her slowly ebbed: he loved her,
ah he loved her.  He was free to enjoy himself with Jeanne, or with others,
he loved her.  "I love you," he had whispered in her ear, "I love you," so
softly it was scarcely audible.  "I love you." He did not leave until he
saw that her eyes were clear and her expression calm, contented.

   Jeanne took O by the hand and led her out into the hallway.  Their mules
again made a resounding noise on the tile floor, and again they found a
valet seated on a bench between the doors.  He was dressed like Pierre, but
it was not Pierre.  This one was tall, dry, and had dark hair.  He preceded
them and showed them into an antechamber where, before a wrought iron door
which stood between two tall green drapes, two other valets were waiting,
some white dogs with russet spots lying at their feet.

   "That's the enclosure," Jeanne murmured.  But the valet who was walking
in front of them heard her and turned around.  O was amazed to see Jeanne
turn deathly pale and let go of her hand, let go of her dress which she was
holding lightly with her other hand, and sink to her knees on the black
tile floor--for the antechamber was tiled in black marble.  The two valets
near the gate burst out laughing.  One of them came over to O and politely
invited her to follow him, opened a door opposite the one she had just
entered, and stood aside.  She heard laughter and the sound of footsteps,
then the door closed behind her.  She never--no, never--learned what had
happened, whether Jeanne had been punished for having spoken, and if so
what the punishment had been, or whether she had simply yielded to a
caprice on the part of the valet, or whether in throwing herself on her
knees she had been obeying some rule or trying to move the valet to pity,
and whether she had succeeded.

   During her initial stay in the chateau, which lasted two weeks, she only
noted that, although the rule of silence was absolute, it was rare that
they did not try and break it while they were alone with the valets, either
being taken to or from some place in the chateau, or during meals,
especially during the day..  It was as though clothing gave them a feeling
of assurance which nakedness and nocturnal chains, and the masters'
presence, destroyed.

   She also noticed that, whereas the slightest gesture which might have
been construed as an advance toward one of the masters seemed quite
naturally inconceivable, the same was not true for the valets.  They never
gave orders, although the courtesy of their requests was as implacable as
an order.  They had apparently been enjoined to punish to the letter
infractions of the rules which occurred in their presence, and to punish
them on the spot.  Thus on three occasions O saw girls who were caught
talking thrown to the floor and whipped once in the hallway leading to the
red wing, and twice again in the refectory they had just entered.  So it
was possible to be whipped in broad daylight, despite what they had told
her the first evening, as though what happened with the valets did not
count and was left to their discretion.

   Daylight made their outfits look strange and menacing.  Some valets wore
black stockings and, in place of the red jacket and the white ruffled
shirt, a soft, wide-sleeved shirt of red silk, gathered at the neck and
with the sleeves also gathered at the wrists.  It was one of these valets
who, on the eighth day at noon, his whip already in his hand, made a buxom
blonde named Madeleine, who was seated not far from O, get up off her
stool.

   Madeleine, whose bosom was all milk and roses, had smiled at him and
spoken a few words so quickly that O had missed them.  Before he had time
to touch her she was on her knees, her hands, so white against the black
silk, lightly stroking the still dormant sex, which she took out and
brought to her half-open mouth.

   That time she was not whipped.  And since he was then the only monitor
in the refectory, and since he closed his eyes as he accepted the caress,
the other girls began talking.  So it was possible to bribe the valets. 
Put what was the use?  If there was one rule to which O had trouble
submitting, and indeed never really submitted to completely, it was the
rule forbidding them to look the men in the face--considering that the rule
applied to the valets as well, O felt herself in constant danger, so
compelling was her curiosity about faces, and she was in fact whipped by
both the valets, not, in truth, each time they noticed her doing it (for
they took some liberties with the instructions, and perhaps cared enough
about the fascination they exercised not to deprive themselves, by too
strict or efficacious an application of the rules, of the gazes which would
leave their face or mouth only to return to their sex, their whips, and
their hands, and then start in all over again), but only when in all
probability they wanted to humiliate her.  No matter how cruelly they
treated her when they had made up their minds to do so, she none the less
never had the courage, or the cowardice, to throw herself at their knees,
and though she submitted to them at times she never tempted or urged them
on.  As for the rule of silence, it meant so little to her that, except in
the case of her lover, she did not once break it, replying by signals
whenever another girl would take advantage of their guards' momentary
distraction to speak to her.  This was generally during meals, which were
taken in the room into which they had been ushered, when the tall valet
accompanying them had turned around to Jeanne.  The walls were black and
the stone floor was black, the long table, of heavy glass, was black too,
and each girl had a round stool covered with black leather on which to sit.
They had to lift their skirts to sit down, and in so doing O rediscovered,
the moment she felt the smooth, cold leather beneath her thighs, that first
moment when her lover had made her take off her stockings and panties and
sit in the same manner on the back seat of the car.

   Conversely, after she had left the chateau and, dressed like everyone
else except for the fact that beneath her innocuous suit or dress she was
naked, whenever she had to lift her petticoat and skirt to sit down beside
her lover, or beside another, were it on the seat of a car or the bench of
a cafe, it was the chateau she rediscovered, the breasts proffered in the
silk bodices, the hands and mouths to which nothing was denied, and the
terrible silence.  And yet nothing had been such a comfort to her as the
silence, unless it was the chains.  The chains and the silence, which
should have bound her deep within herself, which should have smothered her,
strangled her, on the contrary freed her from herself.  What would have
become of her if she had been granted the right to speak and the freedom of
her hands, if she had been free to make a choice, when her lover prostitute
d her before his own eyes?  True, she did speak as she was being tortured,
but can moans and cries be classed as words?  Besides, they often stilled
her by gagging.  Beneath the gazes, beneath the hands, beneath the sexes
that defiled her, the whips that rent her, she lost herself in a delirious
absence from herself which restored her to love and, perhaps, brought her
to the edge of death.  She was anyone, anyone at all, any one of the other
girls, opened and forced like her, girls whom she saw being opened and
forced, for she did see it, even when she was not obliged to have a hand in
it.

   Thus, less than twenty-four hours after her arrival, during her second
day there, she was taken after the meal into the library, there to serve
coffee and tend the fire.  Jeanne, whom the black-haired valet had brought
back, went with her as did another girl named Monique.  It was this same
valet who took them there and remained in the room, stationed near the
stake to which O had been attached.  The library was still empty.  The
French doors faced west, and in the vast, almost cloudless sky the autumn
sun slowly pursued its course, its rays lighting, on a chest of drawers, an
enormous bouquet of sulphur-colored chrysanthemums which smelled of earth
and dead leaves.

   "Did Pierre mark you last night?" the valet asked O.  She nodded that he
had.

   "Then you should show it," he said.  "Please roll up your dress." He
waited till she had rolled her robe up behind, the Way Jeanne had done the
evening before, and till Jeanne had helped her fasten it there.  Then he
told her to light the fire.  O's backside up to her waist, her thighs, her
slender legs, were framed in the cascading folds of green silk and white
linen.  The five welts had turned black.  The fire was ready on the hearth,
all O had to do was ignite the straw beneath the kindling, which leaped
into flame.  Soon the branches of apple wood caught, then the oak logs,
which burned with tall, crackling, almost colorless flames which were
almost invisible in the daylight, but which smelled good.  Another valet
entered and placed a tray filled with coffee cups on the console, from
which the lamp had been removed, then left the room.  O went over near the
console, while Monique and Jeanne remained standing on either side of the
fireplace.

   Just then two men came in, and the first valet in turn left the room.  O
thought she recognized one of the men from his voice, one of those who had
forced her the previous evening, the one who had asked that her rear be
made more easily accessible.  As she poured the coffee into the small black
and gold cups which Monique handed around with the sugar, she stole a
glance at them.  So it was this thin, blond boy, a mere stripling, with an
English air about him.  He was speaking again; now she was certain.  The
other man was also fair, thick set with a heavy face.  Both of them were
seated in the big leather armchairs, their feet near the fire, quietly
smoking and reading their papers, paying no more heed to the women than if
they had not been there.  Now and then the rustle of a paper was heard, or
the sound of coals falling on the hearth.  From time to time O put another
log on the fire.

   She was seated on a cushion on the floor beside the wood basket, Monique
and Jeanne, also on the floor, across from her.  Their flowing skirts
overlapped one another.  Monique's skirt was a dark red.  Suddenly, but
only after an hour had elapsed, the blond boy called Jeanne, then Monique.
He told them to bring the ottoman (it was the same ottoman on which O had
been spread-eagled the night before).  Monique did not wait for further
instructions, she kneeled down, bent over, her breasts crushed against the
fur and holding both corners of the ottoman in her hands.  When the young
man had Jeanne lift the red skirt, she did not stir.  Jeanne was then
obliged to undo his clothing--and he gave her the order in the most
churlish manner--and take between her hands that sword of flesh which had
so cruelly pierced O at least once.  It swelled and stiffened beneath the
closed palm, and O saw these same hands, Jeanne's tiny hands, spreading
Monique's thighs, into the hollow of which, slowly and in short spasms
which made her moan, the lad plunged.

   The other man, who was watching in silence, motioned to O to approach
and, without taking his eyes off the spectacle, toppled her forward over
one arm of his chair--and her raised skirt gave him an unhindered view of
her backside and seized her womb with his hand.

   It was in this position that Rene found her when, a minute later, he
opened the door.

   'Please don't let me disturb you," he said, and he sat down on the
floor, on the same cushion where O had been sitting beside the fire before
she had been called.  He watched her closely, and smiled every time the
hand which was holding her probed and returned, seizing both front and rear
apertures at once and working deeper and deeper as they opened further,
wrenching from her a moan which she could no longer restrain.

   Monique had long since gotten back to her feet, Jeanne was fiddling with
the fire in place of O.  She brought Rene a glass of whisky, and he kissed
her hand as she handed it to him, then drank it down without taking his
eyes off O.

   The man who was still holding her then said:

   "Is she yours?"

   'Yes," Rene replied.

   "James is right," the other went on, "she's too narrow.  She has to be
widened."

   "Not too much, mind you," said James.

   "Whatever you say, Rene said, getting to his feet.  "You're a better
judge than I." And he rang.

   For the next eight days, between dusk when her stint in the library came
to an end and that hour of the night--which was generally eight or ten
o'clock--when she was returned to her cell, in chains and naked beneath her
red cape, O wore an ebonite shaft simulating an erect male member which was
inserted behind and held in place by three small chains connected to a
leather belt around her hips, in such a way that the internal movements of
her muscles could not expel it.  One little chain followed the furrow of
her buttocks, the two others the fold on either side of the belly's
triangle, in order not to prevent anyone from penetrating that side if need
be.  When Rene had rung, it was to have the coffer brought in which
contained, or one of whose compartments contained, an assortment of small
chains and belts, and whose other held a variety of these shafts, ranging
from the very thin to the very thick.  They all had one feature in common,
namely that they flared at the base, to make it impossible for them to
slide up inside the body, an accident which might have produced the
opposite effect from that desired, that is it might have allowed the ring
of flesh to tighten up again, whereas the purpose of the shaft was to
distend it.  Thus quartered, and quartered each day a little more, for
James, who made her kneel down, or rather lie prone, to watch while Jeanne
or Monique, or whichever girl happened to be there, fastened the shaft that
he had chosen, each day chose a thicker one.  At the evening meal, which
the girls took together in the same refectory, after their bath, naked and
powdered, O still wore it, and everyone could see that she was wearing it,
because of the little chains and the belt.  It was only removed, by the
valet, when he came to chain her to the wall for the night if no one had
asked for her, or, if someone had, when he locked her hands behind her if
he had to take her to the library.  Rare were the nights when someone did
not appear to make use of this passage thus rapidly rendered as easy as,
though still narrower than, the other.  After eight days, there was no
longer any need for an instrument, and O's lover told her that he was happy
she was now doubly open and that he would make certain she remained so.  At
the same time, he warned her that he was leaving and that she would not see
him during the last seven days she was to spend in the Chateau, before he
came back to pick her up and take her back to Paris.

   "But I love you," he added, "I do love you.  Don't forget me." Oh, how
could she forget him!  He was the hand that blindfolded her, the whip
wielded by the valet Pierre, he was the chain above her head, the unknown
man Who came down on her, and all the voices which gave her orders were his
voice.  Was she growing weary?  No.  By dint of being defiled and
desecrated, it seems that she must have grown used to outrages, by dint of
being caressed, to caresses, if not to the whip by dint of being whipped.

   A terrible surfeit of pain and pleasure should have by slow degrees cast
her upon benumbing banks, into a state bordering on sleep or somnambulism.
On the contrary.  The bodice which held her straight, the chains which kept
her submissive, her refuge of silence--these may have been responsible in
part--as was the constant spectacle of girls being handed over and used as
she was and, even when they were not, the spectacle of the constantly
available bodies.  Also the spectacle and the awareness of her own body. 
Daily and, so to speak, ceremoniously soiled with saliva and sperm, she
felt herself literally to be the repository of impurity, the sink mentioned
in the Scriptures.  And yet those parts of her body most constantly
offended, having become less sensitive, at the same time seemed to her to
have become more beautiful and, as it were, ennobled: her mouth closed upon
anonymous members, the tips of her breasts constantly fondled by hands, and
between her quartered thighs the twin, contiguous paths wantonly ploughed.
That she should have been ennobled and gained in dignity though being
prostituted was a source of surprise, and yet dignity was indeed the right
term.  She was illuminated by it, as though from within, and her bearing
bespoke calm, while on her face could be detected the serenity and
imperceptible smile that one surmises rather than actually sees in the eyes
of hermits.

   When Rene had informed her that he was leaving, night had already
fallen.

   O was naked in her cell, and was waiting for them to come and take her
to the refectory.  As for her lover, he was dressed as usual, in a suit he
wore every day in town.  When he took her in his arms, the rough tweed of
his clothes irritated the tips of her breasts.  He kissed her, lay her down
on the bed, lay down beside her and, tenderly and slowly and gently, took
her, alternating between the two tracks open to him, before finally
spilling himself into her mouth, which he then kissed again.

   "Before I leave," he said, "I would like to have you whipped, and this
time I'll ask your permission.  Do you agree?"

   She agreed to it.

   "I love you," he repeated.  "Ring for Pierre," She rang.  Pierre chained
her hands above her head, to the chain of the bed.

   When she was thus bound, her lover kissed her again, standing beside her
on the bed.  Again he told her that he loved her, then he got down off the
bed and nodded for Pierre.  He watched her struggle, so fruitlessly; he
listened to her moans swell and become cries.  When her tears flowed, he
sent Pierre away.  She still found the strength to tell him again that she
loved him.

   Then he kissed her drenched face, her gasping mouth, undid her bonds,
laid her down, and left.

   To say that O began to await her lover the minute he left her is a vast
understatement: she was henceforth nothing but vigil and night.  During the
day she was like a painted countenance, whose skin is soft and mouth is
meek and--this was the only time that she abided by the rule--whose eyes
were constantly lowered.  She made and tended the fire, poured and offered
the coffee and liqueurs, lighted the cigarettes, she arranged the flowers
and folded the newspapers like a young girl in her parents' living room, so
limpid with her open neck and leather collar, her tight bodice and
prisoner's bracelets, that all it took for the men whom she was serving was
to order her to remain by their sides while they were violating another
girl to make them want to violate her as well; which doubtless explains why
she was treated even worse than before.  Had she sinned?  or had her lover
left her so that the very people to whom he had loaned her would feel freer
to dispose of her?  In any case, the fact remains that on the second day
following his departure as, at nightfall, she had just undressed and was
looking in the bathroom mirror at the almost vanished welts made by
Pierre's riding crop on the front of her thighs, Pierre entered.  There
were still two hours before dinner.  He told her that she would not dine in
the common room and said to get ready, pointing to the Turkish toilet in
the corner, over which she had to squat, as Jeanne had warned her she would
m; the presence of Pierre.  All the while she remained there, he stood
contemplating her, she could see him in the mirrors, and see herself, and
was incapable of holding back the water which escaped from her body.  He
waited then until she had bathed and powdered herself.  She was going to
get her mules and red cape when he stopped her and added, fastening her
hands behind her back, that there was no need to, but that she should wait
a moment for him.  She sat down on a corner of the bed.  Outside it was
storming, a tempest of cold rain and wind, and the poplar tree near the
window swayed back and forth beneath the gusts.  From time to time a pale
wet leaf would splatter against the windowpanes.  It was as dark as in the
middle of the night, although the hour of seven had not yet struck, for
autumn was well advanced and the days were growing shorter.

   When Pierre returned, he was carrying the same blindfold with which he
had blindfolded her the first evening.  He also had a long chain, which
made a clanking noise, a chain similar to the one fastened to the wall.  O
had the impression that he couldn't make up his mind whether to put the
blindfold or the chain on her first.  She was gazing out at the rain, not
caring what they wanted from her, thinking only that Rene had said he would
come back, that there were still five days and five nights to go, and that
she had no idea where he was or whether he was alone and, if he was not
alone, who he was with.  But he would come back.  Pierre had laid the chain
on the bed and, without interrupting O's daydream, had covered her eyes
with the blindfold of black velvet.  It was slightly rounded below the
sockets of the eyes, and fitted the cheekbones perfectly, making it
impossible to get the slightest peek or even to raise the eyelids.  Blessed
darkness like unto her own night, never had O greeted it with such joy,
blessed chains that bore her away from herself.

   Pierre fastened the chain to the ring in her collar and invited her to
follow him.  She got up, felt herself being pulled forward, and walked. 
Her bare feet were icy cold on the tiles, and she gathered she was
following the hall--way of the red wing; then the ground, which was still
as cold, became rough underfoot: she was walking on a stone floor, made of
sandstone or granite.  Twice the valet made her stop, she heard the sound
of a key in a lock, of a lock being turned and opened, then locked again.
"Careful of the steps," said Pierre, and she went down a staircase, and
once she stumbled.

   Pierre caught her around the waist.  He had never touched her except to
chain or beat her, but here he was now forcing her down onto the cold
steps, which she tried to grasp with her bound hands to keep from slipping,
and he was taking her breasts.  His mouth moved from one to the other, and
as he pressed against her, she could feel him slowly rising.  He did not
help her up until he had taken his pleasure with her.  Damp and trembling
with cold, she finally descended the last steps and heard another door
open, which she went through and immediately felt a thick rug beneath her
feet.  There was another slight tug on the chain, then Pierre's hands were
loosing her hands and untying her blindfold: she was in a round, vaulted
room, which was very small and low: the walls and arches were of
unplastered stone, and the joints n the masonry were visible.  The chain
which was attached to her collar was fastened to the wall by an eye-bolt
opposite the door, which was set about three feet above the floor and
allowed her to move no more than two steps forward.  There was neither a
bed nor anything that might have served as a bed, nor was there any
blanket, only three or four Moroccan-type cushions, but they were out of
reach and clearly not intended for her.  Within reach however, in a niche
from which emanated the little light which lighted the room, was a wooden
tray on which were some water, fruit, and bread.  The heat from the
radiators, which had teen installed along the base of the walls and set
into the walls themselves to form around the entire room a sort of turning
plinth, was none the less insufficient to overcome the odor of earth and
mud which is the odor of ancient prisons and, in old chateaux, of
uninhabited dungeons.  In that hot semi-darkness, into which no sound
intruded, O soon lost all track of time.  There was no longer any day or
night, the light never went out.  Pierre, or some other valet--it hardly
mattered which--replaced the water, fruit, and bread on the tray whenever
it was gone, and took her to bathe in a nearby dungeon.  She never saw the
men who came in, for each time a valet preceded them to blindfold her eyes,
and removed it only after they had left.  She also lost track of them, of
who they were and how many there were, and neither her soft hands nor her
lips blindly caressing were ever able to identify who they were touching.
At times there were several, more often only one, but each time' before
they came near her, she was made to kneel down facing the wall, the ring of
her collar fastened to the same eyebolt to which the chain was attached,
and whipped.  She placed her palms against the wall and pressed her face
against the back of her hands, to keep from scratching it against the
stones; but she scraped her knees and her breasts on them.  Thus she lost
track of the tortures and screams which were smothered by the vault, She
waited.

   Suddenly time no longer stood still.  In her velvet night her chain was
unfastened She had been waiting for three months, three days, or ten days,
or ten years.  She felt herself being wrapped in a heavy cloth, and someone
taking her by the shoulder and knees, lifting and carrying her, She found
herself in her cell, lying under the black fur cover, it was early
afternoon, her eyes were open, her hands free, and Rene was sitting beside
her, stroking her hair.

   "You must get dressed now," he said, "we're leaving." She took a last
bath, he brushed her hair, handed her powder and lipstick to her.  When she
returned to her cell, her suit, her blouse, her slip, her stockings, and
her shoes were on the foot of the bed, as were her gloves and handbag. 
There was even the coat she wore over her suit when the weather turned
brisk, and a square silk scarf to protect her neck, but no garter belt or
panties.  She dressed slowly, rolling her stockings down to just above her
knees, and she did not put on her suit coat because it was very warm in her
cell Just then, the man who had explained on the first evening what would
be expected of her, came in.  He unlocked the collar and bracelets which
had held her captive for two weeks.  Was she freed of them?  or did she
have the feeling something was missing?  She said nothing, scarcely daring
to run her hands over her wrists, not daring to lift them to her throat
Then he asked her to choose, from among the exactly identical rings which
he showed to her in a small wooden box, the one which fit her left ring
finger.  They were strange rings, banded with gold inside, and the signet
was wide and as massive as that of an actual signet ring, but it was
convex, and for design bore a threespoked wheel inlaid in gold, with each
spoke spiraling back upon itself like the solar wheel of the Celts.  The
second ring she tried, though a trifle snug, fit her exactly.  It was heavy
on her hand, and the gold gleamed as though furtively in the dull gray of
the polished iron.  Why iron, and why gold, and this insignia she did not
understand?  It was impossible to talk in this room draped in red, where
the chain was still on the wall above the bed, where the black, still
rumpled cover was lying on the floor, this room into which the valet Pierre
might emerge, was sure to emerge, absurd in his opera outfit, in the dull
light of November.

   She was wrong, Pierre did not appear.  Rene had her put on the coat to
her suit, and her long gloves which covered the bottom of her sleeves.  She
took her scarf, her bag, and carried her coat over her arm.  The heels of
her shoes made less noise on the hallway floor than had her mules, the
doors were closed, the antechamber was empty.

   O was holding her lover by the hand.  The stranger who was accompanying
them opened the wrought-iron gates which Jeanne had said were the
enclosure, which was now no longer guarded either by valets or dogs.  He
lifted one of the green velvet curtains and ushered them both through.  The
curtains fell back into place.  They heard the gate closing.  They were
alone in another antechamber which looked onto the lawn.  All there was
left to do was descend the steps leading down from the stoop, before which
O recognized the car.

   She sat down next to her lover, who took the wheel and started off:.

   After they had left the grounds, through the porte-cochere which was
wide open, he stopped a few hundred meters farther on and kissed her.  It
was on the outskirts of a small peaceful town, which they crossed through
as they continued on their route.  O was able to read the name on the road
sign: Roissy.

   II Sir Stephen

   The apartment where O lived was situated on the Ile Saint-Louis, under
the eaves of an old house which faced south and overlooked the Seine.  All
the rooms, which were spacious and low, had sloping ceilings, and the two
rooms at the front of the house each opened onto a balcony set into the
sloping roof.  One of them was O's room; the other, in which bookshelves
filled one wall from floor to ceiling on either side of the fireplace,
served as a living room, a study, and even as a bedroom in case of
necessity.  Facing the two windows was a big couch, and there was a large
antique table before the fireplace.  It was here that they dined whenever
the tiny dining room, which faced the interior courtyard and was decorated
with dark green serge, was really too small to accommodate the guests.

   Another room, which also looked onto the courtyard, was Rene's, and it
was here that he dressed and kept his clothes.  O shared the yellow
bathroom with him; the kitchen, also yellow, was tiny.  A cleaning woman
came in every day.  The flooring of the rooms overlooking the courtyard was
of red tile, those antique hexagonal tiles which in old Paris hotels are
used to cover the stairs and landings above the second story.  Seeing them
again gave O a shock and made her heart beat faster: they were the same
tiles as the ones in the hallways at Roissy.  Her room was small, the pink
and black chintz curtains were closed, the fire was glowing behind the
metallic screen, the bed was made, the covers turned back.  "I bought you a
nylon night gown," Rene said.  "You've never had one before."

   Yes, a white pleated nylon nightgown, tailored and tasteful like the
clothing of Egyptian statuettes, an almost transparent nightgown was
unfolded on the edge of the bed, on the side where O slept.  O tied a thin
belt around her waist, over the elastic waistband of the nightgown itself,
and the material of the gown was so light that the projection of the
buttocks colored it a pale pink.  Everything--save for the curtains and the
panel hung with the same material against which the head of the bed was
set, and the two small armchairs upholstered with the same
chintz--everything in the room was white: the walls, the fringe around the
mahogany four-poster bed, and the bearskin rug on the floor.  Seated before
the fire in her white nightgown, O listened to her lover.

   He began by saying that she should not think that she was now free. 
With one exception, and that was that she was free not to love him any
longer, and to leave him immediately.  But if she did love him, then she
was in no wise free.  She listened to him without saying a word, thinking
how happy she was that he wanted to prove to himself--it mattered little
how--that she belonged to him, and thinking too that he was more than a
little naive not to realize that this proprietorship was beyond any proof.

   But did he perhaps realize it and want to emphasize it merely because he
derived a certain pleasure from it?  She gazed into the fire as he talked,
but he did not, not daring to meet her eyes.  He was standing, pacing back
and forth.  Suddenly he said to her that, for a start, he wanted her to
listen to him with her knees unclasped and her arms unfolded, for she was
sitting with her knees together and her arms folded around them.  So she
lifted her nightgown and, on her knees, or, rather, squatting on her heels
in the manner of Carmelites or of Japanese women, she waited.  The only
thing was, since her knees were spread, she could feel the light, sharp
pricking of the white fur between her half-open thighs; he came back to it
again: she was not opening her legs wide enough.  The word "open" and the
expression, "opening her legs" were, on her lover's lips, charged with such
uneasiness and power that she could never hear them without experiencing a
kind of internal prostration, a sacred submission, as though a god, and not
he, had spoken to her.  So she remained motionless, and her hands were
lying palm upward beside her knees, between which the material of her
nightgown was spread, with the pleats reforming.

   What her lover wanted from her was very simple: that she be constantly
and immediately accessible.  It was not enough for him to know that she
was: she was to be so without the slightest obstacle intervening, and her
bearing and clothing both were to bespeak, as it were, the symbol of that
availability to experienced eyes.  That, he went on, meant two things.  The
first she knew, having been informed of it the evening of her arrival at
the chateau: that she must never cross her knees, as her lips had always to
remain open.  She doubtless thought that this was nothing (that was indeed
what she did think), but she would learn that to maintain this discipline
would require a constant effort on her part, an effort which would remind
her, in the secret they shared between them and perhaps with a few others,
of the reality of her condition, when she was with those who did not share
the secret, and engaged in ordinary pursuits.

   As for her clothes, it was up to her to choose them, or if need be to
invent them, so that this semi-undressing to which he had subjected her in
the car on their way to Roissy would no longer be necessary: tomorrow she
was to go through her closet and sort out her dresses, and to do the same
with her underclothing by going through her dresser drawers.  She would
hand over to him absolutely everything she found in the way of belts and
panties; the same for any brassieres like the one whose straps he had had
to cut before he could remove it, any full slips which covered her breasts,
all the blouses and dresses which did not open up the front, and any skirts
too tight to be raised with a single movement.  She was to have other
brassieres, other blouses, other dresses made.  Meanwhile, was she supposed
to visit her corset maker with nothing on under her blouse or sweater? 
Yes, she was to go with nothing on underneath.  If someone should notice,
she could explain it any way she liked, or not explain it at all, whichever
she preferred, but it was her problem, and hers alone.  Now, as for the
rest of what he still had to teach her, he preferred to wait for a few days
and wanted her to be dressed properly before hearing it.  She would find
all the money she needed in the little drawer of her desk.

   When he had finished speaking, she murmured "I love you" without the
slightest gesture.  It was he who added some wood to the fire, lighted the
bedside lamp, which was of pink opaline Then he told O to get into bed and
wait for him, that he would sleep with her.  When he came back, O reached
over to turn out the lamp: it was her left hand, and the last thing she saw
before the room was plunged into darkness was the somber glitter of her
iron ring.  She was lying half on her side: her lover called her softly by
name and, simultaneously, seizing her with his whole hand, covered the
nether part of her belly and drew her to him.

   The next day, O, In her dressing gown, had just finished lunch alone in
the green dining room--Rene had left early in the morning and was not due
home until evening, to take her out to dinner--when the phone rang.  The
phone was in the bedroom, beneath the lamp at the head of the bed.  O sat
down on the floor to answer it.  It was Rene, who wanted to know whether
the cleaning woman had left.  Yes, she had just left, after having served
lunch, and would not be back till the following morning.

   "Have you started to sort out your clothes yet?" Rene said.  "I was just
going to start,"

   she answered, "but I got up late, took a bath, and it was noon before I
was ready."'

   "Are you dressed?"

   "No, I have on my nightgown and my dressing gown."

   "Put the phone down, take off your robe and your nightgown."

   O obeyed, so startled that the phone slipped from the bed where she had
placed it down onto the white rug' and she thought she had been cut off. 
No, she had not been cut off.

   "Are you naked?" Rene went on, "Yes," she said.  "But where are you
calling from?"' Rene ignored her question, merely adding:

   "Did you keep your ring on?"

   She had kept her ring on.

   Then he told her to remain as she was until he came home and to prepare,
thus undressed, the suitcase of clothing she was to get rid of.  Then he
hung up.

   It was past one o'clock, and the weather was lovely.  A small pool of
sunlight fell on the rug, lighting the white nightgown and the corduroy
dressing gown, pale green like the shells of fresh almonds, which O had let
slip to the floor when she had taken them off.  She picked them up and went
to take them into the bathroom, to hang them up in a closet.  On her way,
she suddenly saw her reflection in one of the mirrors fastened to a door
and which, together with another mirror covering part of the wall and a
third on another door, formed a large three-faced mirror: all she was
wearing was a pair of leather mules the same green as her dressing
gown--and only slightly darker than the mules she wore at Roissy--and her
ring.  She was no longer wearing either a collar or leather bracelets, and
she was alone, her own sole spectator.  And yet never had she felt herself
more totally committed to a will which was not her own, more totally a
slave, and more content to be so.

   When she bent down to open a drawer, she saw her breasts stir gently. 
It took her almost two hours to lay out on her bed the clothes which she
then had to pack away in the suitcase.  There was no problem about the
panties; she made a little pile of them near one of the bedposts.  The same
for her brassieres, not one would stay, for they all had a strap in the
back and fastened on the side.  And yet she saw how she could have the same
model made, by shifting the catch to the front, in the middle, directly
beneath the cleavage of the breasts.  The girdles and garter belts posed no
further problems, but she hesitated to add to the pile the corset of pink
satin brocade which laced up in the back and so closely resembled the
bodice she had worn at Roissy.

   She put it aside on the dresser.  That would be Rene's decision.  He
would also decide about the sweaters, all of which went on over the head
and were tight at the neck, therefore could not be opened.  But they could
be pulled up from the waist and thus bare the breasts.  All the slips,
however, were piled on her bed.  In the dresser drawer there still remained
a halflength slip of black faille, hemmed with a pleated flounce and fine
Valenciennes lace, which was made to be worn under a pleated sun skirt of
black wool which was too sheer not to be transparent.  She would need other
half-length slips, short, light-colored ones.  She also realized that she
would either have to give up wearing sheath dresses or else pick out the
kind of dress that buttoned all the way down the front, in which case she
would also have to have her slips made in such a way that they would open
together with the dress.  As for the petticoats, that was easy, the dresses
too, but what would her dressmaker say about the underclothes?  She would
explain that she wanted a detachable lining because she was cold-blooded.
As a matter of fact, she was sensitive to the cold, and suddenly she
wondered how in the world she would stand the winter cold when she was
dressed so lightly?  When she had finally finished, and had kept from her
entire wardrobe only her blouses, all of which buttoned down the front, her
black pleated skirt, her coats of course, and the suit she had worn home
from Roissy, she went to prepare tea.  She turned up the thermostat in the
kitchen; the cleaning woman had not filled the wood basket for the living
room fire, and O knew that her lover liked to find her in the living room
beside the fire when he arrived home in the evening.  She filled the basket
from the woodpile in the hallway closet, carried it back to the living room
fireplace, and lighted the fire.  Thus she waited for him, curled up in a
big easy chair, the tea tray beside her, waited for him to come home, but
this time she waited, the way he had ordered her to, naked.

   The first difficulty O encountered was in her work.  Difficulty is
perhaps an exaggeration.  Astonishment would be a better term.  O worked in
the fashion department of a photography agency.  This meant that it was she
who photographed, in the studios where they had to pose for hours on end,
the most exotic and prettiest girls whom the fashion designers had chosen
to model their creations.

   They were surprised that O had postponed her vacation until this late in
the fall and had thus been away at a time of year when the fashion world
was busiest, when the new collections were about to be presented.  But that
was nothing.  What surprised them most was how changed she was.  At first
glance, they found it hard to say exactly what was changed about her, but
nonetheless they felt it, and the more they observed her the more convinced
they were.  She stood and walked straighter, her eyes were clearer, but
what was especially striking was her perfection when she was in repose, and
how measured her gestures were.

   She had always been a conservative dresser, the way girls do whose work
resembles that of men, but she was so skillful that she brought it off; and
because the other girls--who constituted her subjects--were constantly
concerned, both professionally and personally, with clothing and its
adornments, they were quick to note what might have passed unperceived to
eyes other than theirs.  Sweaters worn right next to the skin, which gently
molded the contours of the breasts--Rene had finally consented to the
sweaters--pleated skirts so prone to swirling when she turned: O wore them
so often it was a little as though they formed a discreet uniform.

   "Very little-girl-like," one of the models said to her one day, a blond,
green-eyed model with high Slavic cheekbones and the olive complexion that
goes with it.  "But you shouldn't wear garters," she added.  "You're going
to ruin your legs."

   This remark was occasioned by O, who, without stopping to think, had sat
down somewhat hastily in her presence, and obliquely in front of her, on
the arm of a big leather easy chair, and in so doing had lifted her skirt.
The tall girl had glimpsed a flash of naked thigh above the rolled
stocking, which covered the knee but stopped just above it.

   O had seen her smile, so strangely that she wondered what the girl had
been thinking at the time, or perhaps what she had understood.  She
adjusted her stockings, one at a time, pulling them up to tighten them, for
it was not as easy to keep them tight this way as it was when the stockings
ended at mid-thigh and were fastened to a garter belt, and answered
Jacqueline, as though to justify herself: "It's practical."

   "Practical for what?" Jacqueline wanted to know.

   "I dislike garter belts," O replied.

   But Jacqueline was not listening to her and was looking at the iron
ring.

   During the next few days, O took some fifty photographs of Jacqueline.
They were like nothing she had ever taken before.  Never, perhaps, had she
had such a model.  Anyway, never before had she been able to extract such
meaning and emotion from a face or body.  And yet all she was aiming for
was to make the silks, the furs, and the laces more beautiful by that
sudden beauty of an elfin creature surprised by her reflection in the
mirror, which Jacqueline became in the simplest blouse, as she did in the
most elegant mink.  She had short, thick, blond hair, only slightly curly,
and at the least excuse she would cock her head slightly toward her left
shoulder and nestle her cheek against the upturned collar of her fur, if
she were wearing fur.  O caught her once in this position, tender and
smiling, her hair gently blown as though by a soft wind, and her smooth,
hard cheekbone snuggled against the gray mink, soft and gray as the freshly
fallen ashes of a wood fire.  Her lips were slightly parted, and her eyes
half-closed.  Beneath the gleaming, liquid gloss of the photograph she
looked like some blissful girl who had drowned, she was pale, so pale.  O
had had the picture printed with as little contrast as possible.

   She had taken another picture of Jacqueline which she found even more
stunning: back lighted, it portrayed her bare-shouldered, with her delicate
head, and her face as well, enveloped in a large-meshed black veil
surmounted by an absurd double aigrette whose impalpable tufts crowned her
like wisps of smoke; she was wearing an enormous robe of heavy brocaded
silk, red like the dress of a bride in the Middle Ages, which came down to
below her ankles, flared at the hips and tight at the waist, and the
armature of which traced the outline of her bosom.  It was what the dress
designers called a gala gown, the kind no one ever wears.  The spike-heeled
sandals were also of red silk.  And all the time Jacqueline was before O
dressed in that gown and sandals, and that veil which was like the
premonition of a mask, O, in her mind's eye, was completing, was innerly
modifying the model: a trifle here, a trifle there--the waist drawn in a
little tighter, the breasts slightly raised--and it was the same dress as
at Roissy, the same dress that Jeanne had worn, the same smooth, heavy,
cascading silk which one takes by the handful and raises whenever one is
told to. . .  .

   Why yes, Jacqueline was lifting it in just that way as she descended
from the plat.  form on which she had been posing for the past fifteen
minutes.  It was the same rustling, the same crackling of dried leaves.  No
one wears these gala gowns any longer?  But they do.  Jacqueline was also
wearing a gold choker around her neck, and on her wrists two gold
bracelets. O caught herself thinking that she would be more beautiful with
a leather collar and leather bracelets.  And then she did something she had
never done before: she followed Jacqueline into the large dressing room
adjacent to the studio, where the models dressed and made up and where they
left their clothing and make-up kits after hours.  She remained standing,
leaning against the doorjamb, her eyes glued to the mirror of the dressing
table before which Jacqueline, without removing her gown, had sat down. 
The mirror was so big--it covered the entire back wall, and the dressing
table itself was a simple slab of black glass--that she could see
Jacqueline's and her own reflection, as well as the reflection of the
costume girl who was undoing the aigrettes and the tulle netting.

   Jacqueline removed the choker herself, her bare arms lifted like two
handles; a touch of perspiration gleamed in her armpits, which were shaved
(Why?  O wondered, what a pity, she's so fair), and O could smell the
sharp, delicate, slightly plantlike odor and wondered what perfume
Jacqueline ought to wear--what perfume they would make her wear.  Then
Jacqueline unclasped her bracelets and put them on the glass slab, where
they made a momentary clanking sound like the sound of chains.  Her hair
was so fair that her skin was actually darker than her hair, a grayish
beige like fine--grained sand just after the tide has gone out.  On the
photograph, the red silk would be black.  Just then, the thick eyelashes,
which Jacqueline was always reluctant to make up, lifted, and in the mirror
O met her gaze, a look so direct and steady that, without being able to
detach her own eyes from it, she felt herself slowly blushing.  That was
all.

   I'm sorry," Jacqueline said, "I have to undress.

   "Sorry," O murmured, and closed the door.

   The next day she took home with her the proofs of the shots she had made
the day before, not really knowing whether she wanted, or did not want, to
show them to her lover, with whom she had a dinner date.  She looked at
them as she was putting on her makeup at the dressing table in her room,
pausing to trace on the photographs with her finger the curve of an
eyebrow, the suggestion of a smile.  But when she heard the sound of the
key in the front door, she slipped them into the drawer.

   For two weeks, O had been completely outfitted and ready for use, and
could not get used to being so, when she discovered one evening upon
returning from the studio a note from her lover asking her to be ready at
eight to join him and one of his friends for dinner.  A car would stop by
to pick her up, the chauffeur would come up and ring her bell.  The
postscript specified that she was to take her fur jacket, that she was to
dress entirely in black (entirely was underlined), and was to be at pains
to make up and perfume herself as at Roissy.

   It was six o'clock.  Entirely in black, and for dinner--and it was
midDecember, the weather was cold, that meant black silk stockings, black
gloves, her pleated fan-shaped skirt, a heavy-knit sweater with spangles or
her short jacket of faille.  She decided on the jacket of faille.  It was
padded and quilted in large stitches, close fitting and hooked from neck to
waist like the tight-fitting doublets that men used to wear in the
sixteenth century, and if it molded the bosom so perfectly, it was because
the brassiere was built into it.  It was lined of the same faille, and its
slit tails were hip length.  The only bright foil were the large gold hooks
like those on children's snow boots which made a clicking sound as they
were hooked or unhooked from their broad flat rings.

   After she had laid out her clothes on her bed, and at the foot of the
bed her black suede shoes with raised soles and spiked heels, nothing
seemed stranger to O than to see herself, solitary and free in her
bathroom, meticulously making herself up and perfuming herself, after she
had taken her bath, as she had done at Roissy.  The cosmetics she owned
were not the same as those used at Roissy.  In the drawer of her dressing
table she found some face rouge--she never used any--which she utilized to
emphasize the halo of her breasts.  It was a rouge which was scarcely
visible when first applied, but which darkened later.  At first she thought
she had put on too much and tried to take a little off with alcohol--it was
very hard to remove--and started all over: a dark peony pink flowered at
the tips of her breasts.  Vainly she tried to make up the lips which the
fleece of her loins concealed, but the rouge left no mark.  Finally, among
the tubes of lipstick she had in the same drawer, she found one of those
kiss-proof lipsticks which she did not like to use because they were too
dry and too hard to remove.  There, it worked.  She fixed her hair and
freshened her face, then finally put on the perfume.  Rene had given her,
in an atomizer which released a heavy spray, a perfume whose name she
didn't know, which had the odor of dry wood and marshy plants, a pungent,
slightly savage odor.  On her skin the spray melted, on the fur of the
armpits and belly it ran and formed tiny droplets.  At Roissy O had learned
to take her time: she perfumed herself three times, each time allowing the
perfume to dry.  First she put on her stockings and high heels, then the
petticoat and skirt, then the jacket.  She put on her gloves and took her
bag.  In her bag were her compact, her lipstick, a comb, her key, and ten
francs.  Wearing her gloves, she took her fur coat from the closet and
glanced at the time at the head of her bed: quarter to eight She sat down
diagonally on the edge of the bed and, her eyes riveted to the alarm clock,
waited without moving for the bell to ring.  When she heard it at last and
rose to leave, she noticed in the mirror above her dressing table, before
tuning out the light, her bold, gentle, docile expression.

   When she pushed open the door of the little Italian restaurant before
which the car had stopped, the first person she saw, at the bar, was Rene.
He smiled at her tenderly, took her by the hand, and turning toward a sort
of grizzled athlete, introduced her in English to Sir Stephen H.  O was
offered a stool between the two men, and as she was about to sit down Rene
said to her in a half-whisper to be careful not to muss her dress.  He
helped her to slide her skirt out from under her and down over the edges of
the stool, the cold leather of which she felt against her skin, while the
metal rim around it pressed directly against the furrow of her thighs, for
at first she had dared only half sit down, for fear that if she were to sit
down completely she might yield to the temptation to cross her legs.  Her
skirt billowed around her.

   Her right heel was caught in one of the rungs of the stool, the tip of
her left foot was touching the floor.  The Englishman, who had bowed
without uttering a word, had not taken his eyes off her, she saw that he
was looking at her knees, her hands, and finally at her lips--but so calmly
and with such precise attention, with such self-assurance, that O felt
herself being weighed and measured as the instrument she knew full well she
was, and it was as though compelled by his gaze and, so to speak, in spite
of herself that she withdrew her gloves: she knew that he would speak when
her hands were bare--because she had unusual hands, more like those of a
young boy than the hands of a woman, and because she was wearing on the
third finger of her left hand the iron ring with the triple spiral of gold.
But no, he said nothing, he smiled: he had seen the ring.

   Rene was drinking a martini, Sir Stephen a whisky.  He nursed his
whisky, then waited till Rene had drunk his second martini and O the
grapefruit juice that Rene had ordered for her, meanwhile explaining that
if O would be good enough to concur in their joint opinion, they would dine
in the room downstairs, which was smaller and less noisy than the one on
the first floor, which was simply the extension of the bar.

   "Of course," O said, already gathering up her bag and gloves which she
had placed on the bar.

   Then, to help her off the stool, Sir Stephen offered her his right hand,
in which she placed hers, he finally addressing her directly by observing
that she had hands that were made to wear irons, so becoming was iron to
her.  But as he said it in English, there was a trace of ambiguity in his
words, leaving one in some doubt as to whether he was referring to the
metal alone or whether he were not also, and perhaps even specifically,
referring to iron chains.

   In the room downstairs, which was a simple whitewashed cellar, but cool
and pleasant, there were in fact only four tables, one of which was
occupied by guests who were finishing their meal.  On the walls had been
drawn, like a fresco, a gastronomical and tourist map of Italy, in soft,
ice cream colors: vanilla, raspberry, and pistachio.  It reminded O that
she wanted to order ice cream for dessert, with lots of almonds and whipped
cream.  For she was feeling light and happy, Rene's knee was touching her
knee beneath the table, and whenever he spoke she knew he was talking for
her ears alone.  He too was observing her lips.  They let her have the ice
cream, but not the coffee.  Sir Stephen invited O and Rene to have coffee
at his place.  They had all dined very lightly, and O realized that they
had been careful to drink very little, and had kept her virtually from
drinking at all: half a liter of Chianti for the three of them.  They had
also dined very quickly: it was barely nine o'clock.

   "I sent the chauffeur home," said Sir Stephen, "Would you drive, Rene.

   The simplest thing would be to go straight to my house." Rene took the
wheel, O sat beside him, and Sir Stephen was next to her.  The car was a
big Buick, there was ample room for three people in the front seat.

   After the Alma intersection, the Cours la Reine was visible because the
trees were bare, and the Place de la Concorde sparkling and dry with, above
it, the sort of sky which promises snow, but from which snow has not yet
fallen.  O heard a little click and felt the warm air rising around her
legs: Sir Stephen had turned on the heater.  Rene was still keeping to the
Right Bank of the Seine, then he turned at the Pont Royal to cross over to
the Left Bank: between its stone yokes, the water looked as frozen as the
stone, and just as black.  O thought of hematites, which are black.

   When she was fifteen her best friend, who was then thirty and with whom
she was in love, wore a hematite ring set in a duster of tiny diamonds.  O
would have liked a necklace of those black stones, without diamonds, a
tight-fitting necklace, perhaps even a choker.  But the necklaces that were
given to her now--no, they were not given to her--would she exchange them
for the necklace of hematites, for the hematites of the dream?  She saw
again the wretched room where Marion had taken her, behind the Turbigo
intersection, and remembered how she had untied--she, not Marion--her two
big schoolgirl pigtails when Marion had undressed her and laid her down on
the iron bed.  How lovely Marion was when she was being caressed, and it's
true that eyes can resemble stars; hers looked like quivering blue stars.

   Rene stopped the car.  O did not recognize the little street, one of the
cross streets which joins the rue de l'Universite and the rue de Lille.

   Sir Stephen's apartment was situated at the far end of a courtyard, in
one wing of an old private mansion, and the rooms were laid out in a
straight line, one opening into the next.  The room at the very end was
also the largest, and the most reposing, furnished in dark English mahogany
and pale yellow and gray.  silk drapes.

   "I shan't ask you to tend the fire," Sir Stephen said to O, "but this
sofa is for you.

   Please sit down, Rene will make coffee.  I would be most grateful if you
would hear what I have to say.

   The large sofa of light-colored Damascus silk was set at right angles to
the fireplace, facing the windows which overlooked the garden, and with its
back to those behind, which looked onto the courtyard.  O took off her fur
and lay it over the back of the sofa.  When she turned around, she noticed
that her lover and her host were standing, waiting for her to accept Sir
Stephen's invitation.  She set her bag down next to her fur and unbuttoned
her gloves.  When, when would she ever learn, and would she ever learn, a
gesture stealthy enough so that when she lifted her skirt no one would
notice, so that she herself could forget her nakedness, her submission? 
Not, in any case, as long as Rene and that stranger were staring at her in
silence, as they were presently doing.  Finally she gave in.  Sir Stephen
stirred the fire, Rene suddenly went behind the sofa and, seizing O by the
throat and the hair, pulled her head down against the back of the couch and
kissed her on the mouth, a kiss so prolonged and profound that she gasped
for breath and could feel her loins melting and burning.  He let her go
only long enough to tell her that he loved her, and then immediately took
her again.  O's hands, overturned in a gesture of utter abandon and defeat,
her palms upward, lay quietly on her black dress that spread like a corolla
around her.  Sir Stephen had come nearer, and when at last Rene let her go
and she opened her eyes, it was the gray, unflinching gaze of the
Englishman which she encountered.

   Completely stunned and bewildered, as she still was, and gasping with
joy, she nonetheless was easily able to see that he was admiring her, and
that he desired her.  Who could have resisted her moist, half-open mouth,
with Its full lips, the white stalk of her arching neck against the black
collar of her pageboy jacket, her eyes large and clear, which refused to be
evasive?  But the only gesture Sir Stephen allowed himself was to run his
finger softly over her eyebrows, then over her lips.  Then he sat down
facing her on the opposite side of the fireplace, and when Rene had also
sat down in an armchair, he began to speak.

   "I don't believe Rene has ever spoken to you about his family," he said.

   "Still, perhaps you do know that his mother, before she married his
father, had previously been married to an Englishman, who had a son from
his first marriage.  I am that son, and it was she who raised me, until she
left my father.  So Rene and I are not actually relatives, and yet, in a
way, we are brothers.  That Rene loves you I have no doubt.  I would have
known even if he hadn't told me, even ff he hadn't made a move: all one has
to do is to see the way he looks at you.  I know too that you are among
those girls who have been to Roissy, and I imagine you'll be going back
again.  In principle, the ring you're wearing gives me the right to do with
you what I will, as it does to all those men who know its meaning.  But
that involves merely a fleeting assignation, and what we expect from you is
more serious.  I say 'we' because, as you see, Rene is saying nothing: he
prefers to have me speak for both of us.

   "If we are brothers, I am the eldest, ten years older than he.  There is
also between us a freedom so absolute and of such long standing that what
belongs to me has always belonged to him, and what belongs to him has
likewise belonged to me.

   Will you agree to join with us?  I beg of you to, and I ask you to swear
to it because it will involve more than your submission, which I know we
can count on.  Before you reply, realize for a moment that I am only, and
can only be, another form of your lover: you will still have only one
master.  A more formidable one, I grant you, than the men to whom you were
surrendered at Roissy, because I shall be there every day, and besides I am
fond of habits and rites."

   (This last phrase he uttered in English.) Sir Stephen's quiet,
self-assured voice rose in an absolute silence.  Even the flames in the
fireplace flickered noiselessly.  O was frozen to the sofa like a butterfly
impaled upon a pin, a long pin composed of words and looks which pierced
the middle of her body and pressed her naked, attentive loins against the
warm silk.  She was no longer mistress of her breasts, her hands, the nape
of her neck.  But of this much she was sure: the object of the habits and
rites of which he had spoken were patently going to be the possession of
(among other parts of her body) her long thighs concealed beneath the black
skirt, her already opened thighs.

   Both men were sitting across from her.  Rene was smoking, but before he
had lighted his cigarette he had lighted one of those black-hooded lamps
which consumes the smoke, and the air, already purified by the wood fire,
smelled of the cool odors of the night.

   "Will you give me an answer, or would you like to know more?" Sir
Stephen repeated.

   "If you give your consent," Rene said, "I'll personally explain to you
Sir Stephen's preferences."

   "Demands," Sir Stephen corrected.

   The hardest thing, O was thinking' was not the question of giving her
consent, and she realized that never for a moment--did either of them dream
that she might refuse; nor, for that matter, did she.  The hardest thing
was simply to speak.  Her lips were burning and her mouth was dry, all her
saliva was gone, an anguish both of fear and desire constricted her throat,
and her new-found hands were cold and moist.  If only she could have closed
her eyes.  But she could not.  Two gazes stalked her eyes, gazes from which
she could not--and did not desire to escape.  They drew her toward
something she thought she had left behind far a long time, perhaps forever,
at Roissy.  For since her return, Rene had taken her only by caresses, and
the symbol signifying that she belonged to anyone who knew the secret of
her ring had been without consequence: either she had not met anyone who
was familiar with the secret, or else those who had had remained silent-
the only person she suspected was Jacqueline (and if Jacque line had been
at Roissy, why wasn't she also wearing the ring?  Besides, what right did
Jacqueline's knowledge of this secret give her over O, and did it, in fact,
give her any?).  In order to speak, did she have to move?  But she could
not move of her own free will--an order from them would immediately have
made her get up, but this time what they wanted from her was not blind
obedience, acquiescence to an order, they wanted her to anticipate orders,
to judge herself a slave and surrender herself as such.  This, then, is
what they called her consent.  She remembered that she had never told Rene
anything but "I love you" or "I'm yours." Today it seemed that they wanted
her to speak and to agree to, specifically and in detail, what till now she
had only tacitly consented to.

   Finally she straightened up and, as though what she was going to say was
stifling her, unfastened the top hooks of her tunic, until the cleavage of
her breasts was visible.  Then she stood up.  Her hands and her knees were
shaking.

   "I'm yours," she said at length to Rene.  "I'll be whatever you want me
to be."

   "No," he broke in, "ours.  Repeat after me: I belong to both of you.  I
shall be whatever both of you want me to be."

   Sir Stephen's piercing gray eyes were fixed firmly upon her, as were
Rene's, and in them she was lost, slowly repeating after him the phrases he
was dictating to her, but like a lesson of grammar, she was transposing
them into the first person.

   "To Sir Stephen and to me you grant the right. . ." The right to dispose
of her body however they wished, in whatever place or manner they should
choose, the right to keep her in chains, the right to whip her like a slave
or prisoner for the slightest failing or infraction, or simply for their
pleasure, the right to pay no heed to her pleas and cries, if they should
make her cry out.

   "I believe," said Rene, "that at this point Sir Stephen would like me to
take over, both you and I willing, and have me brief you concerning his
demands."

   O was listening to her lover, and the words which he had spoken to her
at Roissy came back to her: they were almost the same words.  But then she
had listened snuggled up against him, protected by a feeling of
improbability as though it were all a dream, as though she existed only in
another life and perhaps did not really exist at all.

   Dream or nightmare, the prison setting, the lavish party gowns, men in
masks: all this removed her from her own life, even to the point of being
uncertain how long it would last.  There, at Roissy, she felt the way you
do at night, lost in a dream you have had before and are now beginning to
dream all over again: certain that it exists and certain that it will end,
and you want it to end because you're not sure you'll be able to bear it,
and you also want it to go on so you'll know how it comes out.

   Well, the end was here, where she.  least expected it (or no longer
expected it at all) and in the form she least expected (assuming, she was
saying to herself, that this really was the end, that there was not
actually another hiding behind this one, and perhaps still another behind
the next one).  The present end was toppling her from memory into reality
and, besides, what had only been reality in a closed circle, a private
universe, was suddenly about to contaminate all the customs and
circumstances of her daily life, both on her and within her, now no longer
satisfied with signs and symbols--the bare buttocks, bodices that unhook,
the iron ring--but demanding fulfillment.

   It was true that Rene had never whipped her, and the only difference
between the period of their relationship prior to his taking her to Roissy
and the time elapsed since her return was that now he used both her
backside and mouth the way he formerly had used only her womb (which he
continued to use).  She had never been able to tell whether the floggings
she had regularly received at Roissy had been administered, were it only
once, by him (whenever there was any question about it, that is when she
herself had been blindfolded or when those with whom she was dealing were
masked), but she tended to doubt it, The pleasure he derived from the
spectacle of her body bound and surrendered, struggling vainly, and of her
cries, was doubtless so great that he could not bear the idea of lending a
hand himself and thus having his attention distracted from it.  It was as
though he were admitting it, since he was now saying to her, so gently, so
tenderly, without moving from the deep armchair in which he was half
reclining with his legs crossed, he was saying how happy he was to be
turning her over to, how happy he was that she was handing herself over to,
the commands and desires of Sir Stephen.  Whenever Sir Stephen would like
her to spend the night at his place, or only an hour, or if he should want
her to accompany him outside Paris or, in Paris itself, to join him at some
restaurant or for some show, he would telephone her and send his car for
her--unless Rene himself came to pick her up.  Today, now, it was her turn
to speak.

   Did she consent?  But words failed her.  This willful assent they were
suddenly asking her to express was the agreement to surrender herself, to
say yes in advance to everything to which she most assuredly wanted to say
yes but to which her body said no, at least insofar as the whipping was
concerned.  As for the rest, if she were honest with herself, she would
have to admit to a feeling of both anxiety and excitement caused by what
she read in Sir Stephen's eyes, a feeling too intense for her to delude
herself, and as she was trembling like a leaf, and perhaps for the very
reason that she was trembling, she knew that she was waiting more
impatiently than he for the moment when he would place his hand, and
perhaps his lips, upon her.  It was probably up to her to hasten the
moment. Whatever courage, or whatever surge of overwhelming desire she may
have had, she felt herself suddenly grow so weak as she was about to reply
that she slipped to the floor, her dress in full bloom around her, and in
the silence Sir Stephen's hollow voice remarked that fear was becoming to
her too.  His words were not intended for her, but for Rene.  O had the
feeling that he was restraining himself from advancing upon her, and
regretted his restraint.  And yet she avoided his gaze, her eyes fixed upon
Rene, terrified lest he should see what was in her eyes and perhaps deem it
a betrayal.  And yet it was not a betrayal, for If she were to weigh her
desire to belong to Sir Stephen against her belonging to Rene, she would
not have had a second's hesitation: the only reason she was yielding to
this desire was that Rene had allowed her to and, to a certain extent,
given her to understand that he was ordering her to.  And yet there was
still a lingering doubt in her mind as to whether Rene might not be annoyed
to see her acquiesce too quickly or too well.  The slightest sign from him
would obliterate it immediately.  But he made no sign, confining himself to
ask her for the third time for an answer.  She mumbled:

   "I consent to whatever you both desire," and lowered her eyes toward her
hands, which were waiting unclasped in the hollows of her knees, then added
in a murmur: I should like to know whether I shall be whipped...:'

   There was a long pause, during which she regretted twenty times over
having asked the question.  Then Sir Stephen's voice said slowly: From time
to time."

   Then O heard a match being struck and the sound of glasses: both men
were probably helping themselves to another round of whisky.  Rene was
leaving O to her own devices.  Rene was saying nothing.

   "Even if I agree to it now: she said, "even if I promise now, I couldn't
bear it."

   "All we ask you to do is submit to it, and, if you scream or moan, to
agree ahead of time that it will be in vain," Sir Stephen went on.

   "Oh, please, for pity's sake, not yet!" said O, for Sir Stephen was
getting to his feet, Rene was following suit, he leaned down and took her
by the shoulders.

   "So give us your answer," he said.  "Do you consent?"

   Finally she said that she did.

   Gently he helped her up and, having sat down on the big sofa, made her
kneel down alongside him facing the sofa, on which reclined her
outstretched arms, her bust, and her head.  Her eyes were closed, and an
image she had seen several years before flashed across her mind: a strange
print portraying a woman kneeling, as she was, before an armchair.  The
floor was of tile, and in one corner a dog and child were playing.  The
woman's skirts were raised, and standing close beside her was a man
brandishing a handful of switches, ready to whip her.  They were all
dressed in sixteenth-century clothes, and the print bore a title which she
had found disgusting: Family Punishment.

   With one hand, Rene took her wrists in a viselike grip, and with the
other lifted her skirts so high that she could feel the muslin lining brush
her cheek.  He caressed her flanks and drew Sir Stephen's attention to the
two dimples that graced them, and the softness of the furrow between her
thighs.  Then with that same hand he pressed her waist, to accentuate
further her buttocks, and ordered her to open her knees wider.  She obeyed
without saying a word.  The honors Rene was bestowing upon her body, and
Sir Stephen's replies, and the coarseness of the terms the men were using
so overwhelmed her with a shame as violent as it was unexpected that the
desire she had felt to be had by Sir Stephen vanished and she began to wish
for the whip as a deliverance, for the pain and screams as a justification'
But Sir Stephen's hands pried open her loins, forced the buttocks' portal,
retreated, took her again, caressed her until she moaned.  She was
vanquished, undone, and humiliated that she had moaned.

   "I leave you to Sir Stephen," Rene then said.  "Remain the way you are,
he'll dismiss you when he sees fit."

   How often had she remained like this at Roissy, on her knees, offered to
one and all?  But then she had always had her hands bound together by the
bracelets, a happy prisoner upon whom everything was imposed and from whom
nothing was asked.  Here it was through her own free will that she remained
half-naked, whereas a single gesture, the same that would have sufficed to
bring her back to her feet, would also have sufficed to cover her.  Her
promise bound her as much as had the leather bracelets and chains.  Was it
only the promise?  And however humiliated she was, or rather because she
had been humiliated, was it not somehow pleasant to be esteemed only for
her humiliation, for the meekness with which she surrendered, for the
obedient way in which she opened?

   With Rene gone, Sir Stephen having escorted him to the door, she waited
thus alone, motionless, feeling more exposed in the solitude and more
prostituted by the wait than she had ever felt before, when they were
there. The gray and yellow silk of the sofa was smooth to her cheek;
through her nylon stockings she felt, below her knees, the thick wool rug,
and along the full length of her left thigh, the warmth from the fireplace
hearth, for Sir Stephen had added three logs which were blazing noisily.

   Above a chest of drawers, an antique clock ticked so quietly that it was
only audible when everything around was silent O listened carefully,
thinking how absurd her position was in this civilized, tasteful living
room.  Through the Venetian blinds could be heard the sleepy rumbling of
Paris after midnight In the light of day, tomorrow morning, would she
recognize the spot on the sofa cushion where she had laid her head?  Would
she ever return, in broad daylight, to this same living room, would she
ever be treated in the same way here?

   Sir Stephen was apparently in no hurry to return, and O, who had waited
so submissively for the strangers at Roissy to take their pleasure, now
felt a lump rise in her throat at the idea that in one minute, in ten
minutes, he would again put his hands on her.  But it was not exactly as
she had imagined it.

   She heard him open the door and cross the room.  He remained for some
time with his back to the fire, studying O, then in a near whisper he told
her to get up and then sit back down.  Surprised, almost embarrassed, she
obeyed.  lie courteously brought her a glass of whisky and a cigarette,
both of which she refused.  Then she saw that he was in a dressing gown, a
very conservative dressing gown of gray homespun--a gray that matched his
hair.  His hands were long and dry and his flat fingernails, cut short,
were Very white.  He caught her staring, and O blushed: these were indeed
the same hands which had seized her body, the hands she now dreaded, and
desired.  But he did not approach her.

   "I'd like you to get completely undressed," he said.  "But first simply
undo your jacket, without getting up."

   O unhooked the large gold hooks and slipped her close-fitting jacket
down over her shoulders; then she put it at the other end of the sofa,
where her fur, her gloves, and her bag were.

   "Caress the tips of your breasts, ever so lightly," Sir Stephen said
then, before adding: "You must use a darker rouge, yours is too light?'

   Taken completely aback, O fondled her nipples with her fingertips and
felt them stiffen and rise.  She covered them with her palms.  "Oh, no!"
Sir Stephen said.

   She withdrew her hands and lay back against the back of the couch: her
breasts were heavy for so slender a torso, and, parting, rose gently toward
her armpits.  The nape of her neck was resting against the back of the
sofa, and her hands were lying on either side of her hips.  Why did Sir
Stephen not bend over, bring his mouth close to hers, why did his hands not
move toward the nipples which he had seen stiffen and which she, being
absolutely motionless, could feel quiver whenever she took a breath.

   But he had drawn near, had sat down across the arm of the sofa, and was
not touching her.  He was smoking, and a movement of his hand--O never knew
whether or not it was voluntary--flicked some still--warm ashes down
between her breasts.  She had the feeling he wanted to insult her, by his
disdain, his silence, by a certain attitude of detachment Yet he had
desired her a while ago, he still did now, she could see it by the tautness
beneath the soft material of his dressing gown.  Then let him take her, if
only to wound her!  O hated herself for her own desire, and loathed Sir
Stephen for the self-control he was displaying.  She wanted him to love
her, there, the truth was out: she wanted him to be chafing under the urge
to touch her lips and penetrate her body, to devastate her if need be, but
not to remain so calm and self-possessed.  At Roissy, she had not cared in
the slightest whether those who used her had had any feeling whatsoever:
they were the instruments by which her lover derived pleasure from her, by
which she became what he wanted her to be, polished and smooth and gentle
as a stone.  Their hands were his hands, their orders his orders.

   But not here.

   Rene had turned her over to Sir Stephen, but it was clear that he wanted
to share her with him, not to obtain anything further from her, nor for the
pleasure of surrendering her, but in order to share with Sir Stephen what
today he loved most, as no doubt In days gone by, when they were young,
they had shared a trip, a boat, a horse.  And today, this sharing derived
its meaning from Rene's relation to Sir Stephen much more than it did from
his relation to her.  What each of them would look for in her would be the
other's mark, the trace of the other's passage.  Only a short while before,
when she had been kneeling half-naked before Rene, and Sir Stephen had
opened her thighs with both his hands, Rene had explained to Sir Stephen
why O's buttocks were so easily accessible, and why he was pleased that
they had been thus prepared: it was because it had occurred to him that Sir
Stephen would enjoy having his preferred path constantly at his disposal.
He had even added that, if Sir Stephen wished, he would grant him the sole
use of it.

   Why, gladly," Sir Stephen had said, but he had remarked that, in spite
of everything, there was a risk he might rend O.

   "O is yours, Rene had replied, "O will be pleased to be rent." And he
had leaned down over her and kissed her hands.

   The very idea that Rene could imagine giving up any part of her left O
stunned.  She had taken it as the sign that her lover cared more about Sir
Stephen than he did about her.  And too, although he had so often told her
that what he loved in her was the object he had made of her, her absolute
availability to him, his freedom with respect to her, as one is free to
dispose of a piece of furniture, which one enjoys giving as much as, and
sometimes even more than, one may enjoy keeping it for oneself, she
realized that she had not believed him completely.

   She saw another sign of what could scarcely be termed anything but a
certain deference or respect toward Sir Stephen, in the fact that Rene, who
so passionately loved to see her beneath the bodies or the blows of others
besides himself, whose look was one of constant tenderness, of unflagging
gratitude whenever he saw her mouth open to moan or scream, her eyes closed
over tears, had left her after having made certain, by exposing her to him,
by opening her as one opens a horse's mouth to prove that it is young
enough, that Sir Stephen found her beautiful enough or, strictly speaking,
suitable enough for him, and vouchsafed to accept her.  However offensive
and insulting his conduct may have been, O's love for Rene remained
unchanged.  She considered herself fortunate to count enough in his eyes
for him to derive pleasure from offending her, as believers give thanks to
God for humbling them.

   But, in Sir Stephen, she thought she detected a will of ice and iron,
which would not be swayed by desire, a will in whose judgment, no matter
how moving and submissive she might be, she counted for absolutely nothing,
at least till now.

   Otherwise why should she have been so frightened?  The whip at the
valets' belt at Roissy, the chains borne almost constantly had seemed to
her less terrifying than the equanimity of Sir Stephen's gaze as it
fastened on the breasts he refrained from touching.

   She realized to what extent their very fullness, smooth and distended on
her tiny shoulders and slender torso, rendered them fragile.  She could not
keep them from trembling' she would have had to stop breathing.  To hope
that this fragility would disarm Sir Stephen was futile, and she was fully
aware that it was quite the contrary: her proffered gentleness cried for
wounds as much as caresses, fingernails as much as lips.  She had a
momentary illusion: Sir Stephen's right hand, which was holding his
cigarette, grazed their tips with the end of his middle finger and,
obediently, they stiffened further.  That this, for Sir Stephen, was a
game, or the guise of a game, nothing more, or a check, the way one checks
to ascertain whether a machine is functioning properly, O had no doubt.

   Without moving from the arm of his chair, Sir Stephen then told her to
take off her skirt.  O's moist hands made the hooks slippery, and it took
her two tries before she succeeded in undoing the black faille petticoat
under her skirt.

   When she was completely naked, her high-heeled patent-leather sandals
and her black nylon stockings rolled down flat above her knees,
accentuating the delicate lines of her legs and the whiteness of her
thighs, Sir Stephen, who had also gotten to his feet, seized her loins with
one hand and pushed her toward the sofa.

   He had her kneel down, her back against the sofa, and to make her press
more tightly against it with her shoulders than with her waist, he made her
spread her thighs slightly.  Her hands were lying on her ankles, thus
forcing her belly ajar, and above her still proffered breasts, her throat
arched back.

   She did not dare look Sir Stephen in the face, but she saw his hands
undoing his belt.  When he had straddled O, who was still kneeling, and had
seized her by the nape of the neck, he drove into her mouth.  It was not
the caress of her lips the length of him he was looking for, but the back
of her throat.  For a long time he probed, and O felt the suffocating gag
of flesh swell and harden, its slow repeated hammering finally bringing her
to tears.  In order to invade her better, Sir Stephen ended by kneeling on
the sofa, one knee on each side of her face, and there were moments when
his buttocks rested on O's breast, and in her heart she felt her womb,
useless and scorned, burning her.  Although he delighted and reveled in her
for a long time, Sir Stephen did not bring his pleasure to a climax, but
withdrew from her in silence and rose again to his feet, without closing
his dressing gown.

   "You are easy, O," he said to her.  "You love Rene, but you're easy. 
Does Rene realize that you covet and long for all the men who desire you,
that by sending you to Roissy or surrendering you to others he is providing
you with a string of alibis to cover your easy virtue?"

   "I love Rene," O replied.

   "You love Rene, but you desire me, among others," Sir Stephen went on.

   Yes, she did desire him, but what if Rene, upon learning it, were to
change?  All she could do was remain silent and lower her eyes: even to
have looked Sir Stephen directly in the eyes would have been tantamount to
a confession.

   Then Sir Stephen bent down over her and, taking her by the shoulders,
made her slide down onto the rug.  Again she was on her back, her legs
raised and doubled up against her.  Sir Stephen, who had sat down on that
part of the couch against which she had just been leaning, seized her right
knee and pulled her toward him.  Since she was facing the fireplace, the
light from the nearby hearth shed a fierce light upon the double, quartered
furrow of her belly and rear.

   Without loosing his grip, Sir Stephen abruptly ordered her to caress
herself, without closing her legs.

   Startled, O meekly stretched her right hand toward her loins, where her
fingers encountered the ridge of flesh already emerging from the protective
fleece beneath, already burning where her belly's fragile lips merged.

   But her hand recoiled and she mumbled:

   "I can't."

   And in fact she could not The only times she had ever caressed herself
furtively had been in the warmth and obscurity of her bed, when she slept
alone, but she had never tried to carry it to a dim ax.  But later she
would sometimes come upon it in her sleep and would wake up disappointed
that it had been so intense and yet so fleeting.  Sir Stephen's gaze was
persistent.  She could not bear it, and repeating "I can't," she closed her
eyes.

   What, she was seeing in her mind's eye, what she had never been able to
forget, what still filled her with the same sensation of nausea and disgust
that she had felt when she had first witnessed it when she was fifteen, was
the image of Marion slumped in the leather armchair in a hotel room, Marion
with one leg sprawled over one arm of the chair and her head half hanging
over the other, caressing herself in her, O's, presence, and moaning. 
Marion had related to her how she had one day caressed herself this way in
her office when she had thought she was alone, and her boss had happened to
walk in and caught her in the act.

   O remembered Marion's office, a bare room with pale green walls, with
the north light filtering in through dusty windows.  There was only one
easy chair, intended for visitors, facing the table.

   Did you run away?" O had asked.

   "No" Marion had answered, "he asked me to begin all over again, but he
locked the door, made me take off my panties, and pushed the chair over in
front of the window."

   O had been' overwhelmed with admiration--and with horror--for what she
took to be Marion's courage and had steadfastly refused to fondle herself
in Marion's presence and sworn that she never would, in anyone's presence.
Marion had laughed and said:

   'You'll see.  Wait till your lover asks you to."

   Rene never had asked her to.  Would she have obeyed?  Yes, of course she
would, but she would also have been terrified at the thought that she might
see Rene's eyes filling with the same disgust that she had felt for Marion.

   Which was absurd.  And since it was Sir Stephen, it was all the more
absurd; what did she care whether Sir Stephen was disgusted?  But no, she
couldn't, For the third time she murmured:

   "I can't."

   Though she uttered the words in almost a whisper, he heard them, let her
go, rose to his feet, closed his dressing gown, and ordered O to get up.

   "Is this your obedience?" he said.

   Then he caught both her wrists with his left hand, and with his right he
slapped her on both sides of the face.  She staggered, and would have
fallen had he not held her up.

   "Kneel down and listen to me," he said.  "I'm afraid Ben's training
leaves a great deal to be desired."

   "I always obey Rene," she mumbled.

   "You're confusing love and obedience.  You'll, obey me without loving
me, and without my loving you.

   With that, she felt a strange inexplicable storm of revolt rising within
her, silently denying in the depths of her being the words she was hearing,
denying her promises of submission and slavery, denying her own agreement,
her own desire, her nakedness, her sweat, her trembling limbs, the circles
under her eyes.  She struggled and clenched her teeth with rage when,
having made her bend over, with her elbows on the floor and her head
between her arms, her buttocks raised, he forced her from behind, to rend
her as Rene had said he would.

   The first time she did not cry out.  He went at it again, harder now,
and she screamed.

   She screamed as much out of revolt as of pain, and lie was fully aware
of it, She also knew--which meant that in any event she was vanquished-
that he was pleased to make her cry out.  When he had finished with her,
and after he had helped her to her feet, he was on the point of dismissing
her when he remarked to her that what he had spilled in her was going to
seep slowly out tinted with the blood of the wound he had inflicted on her,
that this wound would burn her as long as her buttocks were not used to him
and he was obliged to keep on forcing his way.  Rene had reserved this
particular use of her to him, and he certainly intended to make full use of
it, she had best have no illusions on that score.  He reminded her that she
had agreed to be Rene's slave, and his too, but that it appeared unlikely
that she was aware--consciously aware--of what she had consented to.  By
the time she had learned, it would be too late for her to escape.

   Listening, O told herself that perhaps it would also be too late for him
to escape becoming enamored of her, for she had no intention of being
quickly tamed, and by the time she was he might have learned to love her a
little.  For all her inner resistance, and the timid refusal she had dared
to display, had one object and one object alone: she wanted to exist for
Sir Stephen, in however modest a way, In the same way she existed for Rene,
and wanted him to feel something more than desire for her.  Not that she
was in love, but because she clearly saw that Rene loved Sir Stephen in
that passionate way boys love their elders, and she sensed that he was
ready, if need be, to sacrifice her to any and all of Sir Stephen's whims,
in an effort to satisfy him.  She knew with an infallible intuition that
Rene would follow Sir Stephen's example and emulate his attitude, and that
if Sir Stephen were to show contempt for her, Rene would be contaminated by
it, no matter how much he loved her, contaminated in a way he had never
before been, or had dreamed of being, by the opinions and example of the
men at Roissy.  This was because at Roissy, with regard to her, he was the
master, and the opinions of all the men there to whom he gave her derived
from and depended on his own.  Here he was not the master any longer.  On
the contrary.  Sir Stephen was Rene's master, without Rene's being fully
aware of it, which is to say that Rene admired him and wanted to emulate
him, to compete with him, and this was why he was sharing every-thing with
him, and why he had given O to him: this time it was apparent that she had
been given with no strings attached.  Rene would probably go on loving her
insofar as Sir Stephen deemed that she was worth the trouble and would Jove
her himself.  Till then, it was clear that Sir Stephen would be her master
and, regardless of what Rene might think, her only master, in the precise
relation-ship of master to slave.  She did not expect any pity from him;
but could she not hope to wrest some slight feeling of love from him?

   Sprawled in the same big armchair, next to the fire which he had been
occupying before Rene's departure' he had left her standing there naked and
told her to await his further orders.  She had waited without saying a
word. Then he had got to his feet and told her to follow him.  Still naked,
except for her high-heeled sandals and black stockings, she had followed
him up a flight of stairs which went from the ground-floor landing, and
entered a small bedroom, a room so tiny there was only space enough for a
bed in one corner and a dressing table and chair between the bed and
window. This small room communicated with a larger room, which was Sir
Stephen's, with a common bathroom between.

   O washed and wiped herself-the towel was faintly stained with
pinkremoved her sandals and stockings, and crawled in between the cold
sheets.

   The curtains of the window were open, but the night was dark.

   Before he closed the door between their rooms, after O was already in
bed, Sir Stephen came over to her and kissed her fingertips, as he had done
when she had slipped down off her stool in the bar and he had complimented
her on her iron ring.

   Thus, he had thrust his hands and sex into her, ransacked and ravaged
her' mouth and rear, but condescended only to place his lips upon her
fingertips.  O wept, and did not fall asleep until dawn.

   The following day, a little before noon, Sir Stephen's chauffeur drove O
home.  She had awakened at ten, an elderly mulatto servant had brought her
a cup of coffee, prepared her bath, and given, her her clothes, except for
her fur wrap, her gloves, and her bag, which she had found on the
livingroom couch when she had gone downstairs.  The living room was empty,
the Venetian blinds were raised, and the curtains were open.  Through the
window opposite the couch, she could see a garden green and narrow as an
aquarium, planted in nothing but ivy, holly and spindle hedges.

   As she was putting on her coat, the mulatto servant told her that Sir
Stephen had left, and handed her an envelope on which there was nothing but
her initial; the white sheet inside consisted of two lines: "Rene phoned
that he would come by for you at the studio at six o'clock," signed with an
S and with a postscript: "The riding crop is for your next visit."

   O glanced around her: on the table, between the two chairs in which Sir
Stephen and Rene had been sitting the evening before, there was a long,
slender, leather riding crop near a vase of yellow roses.  The servant was
waiting at the door.  O put the letter in her bag and left.  So Rene had
phoned Sir Stephen, and not her.  Back home, after having taken off her
clothes, and having had lunch in her dressing gown, she still had plenty of
time to freshen her make-up and rearrange her hair, and to get dressed to
go to the studio, where she was due at three o'clock.  The telephone did
not ring; Rene did not call her.  Why?  What had Sir Stephen told him?  How
had they talked about her?  She remembered the words they both had used in
her presence, their casual remarks concerning the advantages of her body
with respect to the demands of theirs.  Perhaps it was merely that she was
not used to this kind of vocabulary in English, but the only French
equivalents she could find seemed utterly base and contemptible to her.  It
was true that she had been passed from hand to hand as often as were the
prostitutes in brothels, so' why should they treat her otherwise?  "I love
you, I love you Rene," she repeated, softly calling to him in the solitude
of her room, "I love you, do whatever you want with me, but don't leave me,
for God's sake don't leave me."

   Who pities those who wait?  They are easily recognized: by their
gentleness, by their falsely attentive looks--attentive, yes, but to
something other than what they are looking at--by their absent-mindedness.
For three long hours, in the studio where a short, plump red-haired model
whom O did not know and who was modeling hats for her, O was that
absentminded person, withdrawn into herself by her desire for the minutes
to hasten by, and by her own anxiety.  Over a blouse and petticoat of red
silk she had put on a plaid skirt and a short suede jacket.  The bright red
of her blouse beneath her partly opened jacket made her already pale face
seem even paler, and the little red-haired model told her that she looked
like a femme fatale.  "Fatal for whom?" O said to herself.

   Two years earlier, before she had met and fallen in love with Rene, she
would have sworn: "Fatal for Sir Stephen" and have added: "and he'll know
it too."

   But her love for Rene and Rene's love for her had stripped her of all
her weapons, and instead of providing her with any new proof of her power,
had stripped her of those she had previously possessed.  Once she had been
indifferent and fickle, someone who enjoyed tempting, by a word or gesture,
the boys who were in love with her, but without giving them anything, then
giving herself impulsively, for no reason, once and only once,' as a
reward, but also to inflame them even more and render a passion she did not
share even more cruel.  She was sure that they loved her.  One of them had
tried to commit suicide; when he had been released from the hospital where
they had taken him' she had gone to his place had stripped naked, and
forbidding him to touch her, had lain down on his couch.  Pale with pain
and passion, he had stared at her silently for two hours, petrified by the
promise he had made.  She had never wanted to see him again.  It wasn't
that she took lightly the desire she aroused.  She understood it, or
thought she understood, all the more so because she herself felt a similar
desire (or so she thought), for her girl friends, or for young strangers,
girls she encountered by chance.

   Some of them yielded to her, and she would take them to some discreet
hotel with its narrow hallways and paper-thin walls, while others,
horrified, spurned her.  But what she took or mistook--to be desire was
actually nothing more than the thirst for conquest, and neither her
tough-guy exterior nor the fact that she had had several lovers--if you
could call them lovers--nor her hardness, nor even her courage was of any
help to her when she met Rene In the space of a week she learned fear, but
certainty; anguish, but happiness.  Rene threw himself at her like a pirate
at his prisoner, and she reveled in her captivity, feeling on her wrists,
her ankles, feeling on all her members and in the secret depths of her
heart and body', bonds less visible than the finest strands of hair, more
powerful than the cables the Lilliputians used to tie up Gulliver, bonds
her lover loosened or tightened with a glance.  She was no longer free? 
Yes!  thank God, she was no longer free.

   But she was light, a nymph on clouds, a fish in water, lost in
happiness. Lost because these fine strands of hair, these cables which Rene
held, without exception, in his hand, were the only network through which
the current of life any longer flowed into her.

   This was true to such a degree that when Rene relaxed his grip upon her-
or when she imagined he had--when he seemed distracted, when he left her in
a mood which she took to be indifference or let some time go by without
seeing her or replying to her letters and she assumed that he no longer
cared to see her and was on the verge of ceasing to love her, then
everything was choked and smothered within her.

   The grass turned black, day was no longer day nor night any longer
night, but both merely Infernal machines which alternately provided, as
part of her torture, periods of light and darkness.  Cool water made her
nauseous.  She felt as though she were a statue of ashes--bitter, useless,
damned- like the salt statues of Gomorrah.  For she was guilty.

   Those who love God, and by Him are abandoned in the dark of night, are
guilty, because they are abandoned.  They cast back into their memories,
searching for their sins.  She looked back, hunting for hers.

   All she found were insignificant acts of kindness or self-indulgence,
which were not so much acts as an innate part of her personality, such as
arousing the desires of men other than Rene, men she noticed only to the
extent that the love Rene gave her, the certainty of belonging to Rene,
made her happy and filled her cup of happiness to overflowing, and insofar
as her total submission to Rene rendered her vulnerable, irresponsible, and
all her trifling acts--but what acts?  For all she had to reproach herself
with were thoughts and fleeting temptations.  Yet, he was certain that she
was guilty and, without really wanting to, Rene was punishing her for a sin
he knew nothing about (since it remained completely internal), although Sir
Stephen had immediately detected It: her wantonness.

   O was happy that Rene had had her whipped and had prostituted her,
because her impassioned submission would furnish her lover with the proof
that she belonged to him, but also because the pain and shame of the lash,
and the outrage inflicted upon her by those who compelled her to pleasure
when they took her, and at the same time delighted in their own without
paying the slightest heed to hers, seemed to her the very redemption of her
sins.  There had been embraces she had found foul, hands that had been an
intolerable insult on her breasts, mouths which had sucked in her lips and
tongue like so many soft, vile leeches, and tongues and sexes, viscous
beasts which, caressing themselves at her closed mouth, at the double
furrow, before and behind, which she had squeezed tight with all her might,
had stiffened her with disgust and kept her stiffened so long that it was
all the whip could do to unbend her, but she had finally yielded to the
blows and opened, with disgust and abominable servility.

   And what if, in spite of that, Sir Stephen was right?  What if she
actually enjoyed her debasement?  In that case, the baser she was, the more
merciful was Rene to consent to make O the instrument of his pleasure.

   As a child, O had read a Biblical text in red letters on the white wall
of a room in Wales where she had lived for two months, a text such as the
Protestants often inscribe in their houses:

   IT IS A FEARFUL THING TO FALL INTO THE HANDS OF THE LIVING GOD.

   No, O told herself now, that isn't true.  What is fearful is to be cast
out of the hands of the living God.  Every time Rene postponed, or was late
to, a rendezvous with her, as he had done today--for six o'clock had come
and gone, as had six-thirty--O was prey to a dual feeling of madness and
despair, but for nothing.  Madness for nothing, despair for nothing,
nothing was true.  Rene would arrive, he would be there, nothing was
changed, he loved her but had been held up by a staff meeting or some extra
work, he had not had time to let her know; in a flash, O emerged from her
airless chamber, and yet each of these attacks of terror would leave
behind, somewhere deep inside her, a dull premonition, a warning of woe:
for there were also times when Rene neglected to let her know when the
reason for the delay was a game of golf or a hand of bridge, or perhaps
another face, for he loved O but he was free, sure of her and fickle, so
fickle.

   Would a day of death and ashes not come, a day in the long string of
other (lays which would give the nod to madness, a day when the gas chamber
would reopen?  Oh, let the miracle continue, let me still be touched by
grace, Rene don't leave me!  Each day, O did not look, nor did she care to
look, any further than the next day and the day after; nor, each week, any
further than the following week.  And for her every night with Rene was a
night which would last forever.

   Rene finally arrived at seven, so happy to see her again that he kissed
her in front of the electrician who was repairing a floodlight, in front of
the short, red-haired model who was just coming out of the dressing room,
and in front of Jacqueline, whom no one expected, who had come in suddenly
on the heels of the other model.

   "What a lovely sight," Jacqueline said to O.  "I was just passing, I
wanted to ask you for the last shots of me you took, but I gather this
isn't the right moment.  I'll be on my way.

   "Mademoiselle, please don't go," Rene called after her, without letting
go of O, whom he was holding around the waist, "please don't go!"

   o introduced them: Jacqueline, Rene; Rene, Jacqueline.

   Piqued, the red-haired model had gone back into her dressing room, the
electrician was pretending to be busy.  O was looking at Jacqueline and
could feel Rene's eyes following her gaze.  Jacqueline was wearing a ski
outfit, the kind that only movie stars who never go skiing wear.  Her black
sweater accentuated her small, widely spaced breasts, her tight-fitting. 
ski pants did the same for her long, winter-sports-girl legs.

   Everything about her looked like snow: the bluish sheen of her gray
sealskin jacket was snow in the shade; the hoarfrost reflection of her hair
and eyelashes, snow in sunlight She had on lipstick whose deep red shaded
almost to purple, and when she smiled and lifted her eyes till they were
fixed on O, O said to herself that no one could resist the desire to drink
of that green and moving water beneath the silvery lashes, to rip off her
sweater to lay his hands on the fairly small breasts.  There, you see: no
sooner had Rene returned than, completely reassured by his presence, she
recovered her taste for others and for herself, her zest for life itself,

   They left together, all three of them.  On the rue Royale the snow,
which had been falling in large flakes for two hours, fell now in eddies of
thin little white flies which stung the face.  The rock salt scattered on
the sidewalk crunched beneath their feet and melted the snow, and O felt
the icy breath it emitted rising along her legs and fasten on her naked
thighs.

   O had a fairly clear idea of what she was looking for in the young women
she pursued.  It wasn't that she wanted to give the impression she was
vying with men, nor that she was trying to compensate by her manifest
masculinity for a female inferiority which she in no wise felt.' It's true
that when she was twenty she had caught herself courting the prettiest of
her girl friends by doffing her beret, by standing aside to let her pass,
and by offering a hand to help her out of a taxi.  In the same vein, she
would not tolerate not paying whenever they had tea together in some pastry
shop.  She would kiss her hand and, if she had a chance, her mouth, if
possible in the street.  But these were so many affectations she paraded
for the sake of scandal, displayed much more from childishness than from
conviction.  On the other hand, her penchant for the sweetness of sweetly
made-up' lips yielding beneath her own, for the porcelain or pearly sparkle
of eyes halfclosed in the half-light of couches at five in the afternoon,
when the curtains are drawn and the lamp on the fireplace mantel lighted,
for the voices that say: "Again, oh, please, again..," for the marine odor
clinging to her fingers: this was a real, deeply-rooted taste.  And she
also enjoyed the pursuit just as much.

   Probably not for the pursuit itself, however amusing or fascinating it
might be, but for the complete sense of freedom she experienced in the act
of hunting.  She, and she alone, set the rules and directed the proceedings
(something she never did with men, or only in a most oblique manner).  She
initiated the discussions and set the rendezvous, the kisses came from her
too, so much so that she preferred not to have someone kiss her first, and
since she had first had lovers she almost never allowed the girl whom she
was caressing to return her caresses.  As much as she was in a hurry to
behold her girl friend naked, she was equally quick to find excuses why she
herself should not undress.  She often looked for excuses to avoid it,
saying that she was cold, that it was the wrong time of the month for her.
And, what is more, rare was the woman whom she failed to detect some
element of beauty.  She remembered that, just out of the lycee, she had
tried to seduce an ugly, disagreeable, constantly ill-natured little girl
for the sole reason that she had a wild mop of blond hair which, by its
unevenly cut curls, created a forest of light and shade over a skin that,
while lusterless, had a texture which was soft, smooth, and totally flat.
But the little girl had repelled her advances, and if one day pleasure had
ever lighted up the ungrateful wench's face, it had not been because of O.
For O passionately loved to see faces enveloped in that mist which makes
them so young and smooth, a timeless youth that does not restore childhood
but enlarges the lips, widens the eyes the way makeup does, and renders the
iris sparkling and clear.  In this, admiration played a larger part than
pride, for it' was not her handiwork which moved her: at Roissy she had
experienced the same uncomfortable feeling in the presence of the
transfigured face of a girl possessed by a stranger.  The nakedness and
surrender of the bodies overwhelmed her, and she had the feeling that her
girl friends, when they simply agreed to display themselves naked in a
locked room, were giving her a gift which she could never repay in kind. 
For the nakedness of vacations, in the sun and on the beaches, made no
impression on her--not simply because it was public but because, being
public and not absolute, she was to some extent protected from It The
beauty of other women, which with unfailing generosity she was inclined to
find superior to her own, nevertheless reassured her concerning her own
beauty, in which she saw, whenever she unexpectedly caught a glimpse of
herself in a mirror, a kind of reflection of theirs.  The power she
acknowledged that her girl friends held over her was at the same time a
guarantee of her own power over men.

   And what she asked of women (and never returned, or ever so little), she
was happy and found it quite natural that men should be eager and impatient
to ask of her.  Thus was she constantly and simultaneously the accomplice
of both men and women, having, as it were, her cake and eating it too. 
There were times when the game was not all that easy.  That O was in love
with Jacqueline, no more and no less than she had been in love with many
others, and assuming that the term "in love" (which was saying a great
deal) was the proper one, there could be no doubt.  But why did she conceal
it so?

   When the buds burst open on the poplar trees along the quays, and
daylight, lingering longer, gave lovers time to sit for a while in the
gardens after work, she thought she had at last found the courage to face
Jacqueline.  In winter, Jacqueline had seemed too triumphant to her beneath
her cool furs, too iridescent, untouchable, inaccessible.  And Jacqueline
knew it.  Spring put her back into suits, flat-heeled shoes, sweaters. 
With her short Dutch bob, she finally resembled those fresh schoolgirls
whom O, as a lycee student herself, used to grab by the wrists and drag
silently into an empty cloakroom and push back against the hanging coats.
The coats would tumble from the hangers.  Then O would burst out laughing.
They used to wear uniform blouses of raw cotton, with their initials
embroidered in red cotton on their breast pockets.  Three years later,
three kilometers away, Jacqueline had worn the same blouses in another
lycee.  It was by chance that O learned that one day when Jacqueline was
modeling some high-fashion dresses and said with a sigh that, really, if
only they had had as pretty dresses at school, they would have been much
happier there.  Or if they had been allowed to wear the jumper they gave
you, without anything on underneath.  "What do you mean, without anything
on?" O said.

   "Without a dress, naturally," Jacqueline replied.  To which O began to
blush.  She could not get used to being naked beneath her dress, and any
equivocal remark seemed to her to be an allusion to her condition.  It did
no good to keep on repeating to herself that one is always naked beneath
one's clothes.  No, she felt as naked as that woman from Verona who went
out to offer herself to the chief of the besieging army in order to free
her city: naked beneath a coat, which only needed to be opened a crack.  It
also seemed to her that, like the Italian, her nakedness was meant to
redeem something.

   But what?  Since Jacqueline was sure of herself, she had nothing to
redeem; she had no need to be reassured, all she needed was a mirror.  O
looked at her humbly, thinking that the only flowers one could offer her
were magnolias, because their thick, lusterless petals slowly turn to
blister as they fade and wither, or else camellias, because their waxen
whiteness is sometimes infused with a pink glow.  As winter waned, the pale
tan that gilded Jacqueline's skin vanished with the memory of the snow. 
Soon, only camellias would do.  But O was afraid of making a fool of
herself with these melodramatic flowers.  One day she brought a big bouquet
of blue hyacinths, whose odor is overwhelming, like that of tuberoses:
oily, cloying, clinging, exactly the odor camellias ought to have but
don't. Jacqueline buried her Mongolian nose in the warm, stiff-stemmed
flowers, her small nose and her pink lips, for she had been wearing a pink
lipstick for the past two weeks, and not red any longer.

   Are they for me?" she said, the way women do who are used to receiving
gifts.

   Then she thanked O and asked her if Rene were coming for her.  Yes, he
was coming, O said.  He's coming, she repeated to herself, and it will be
for him that Jacqueline will lift her icy, liquid eyes for a second, those
eyes which never look at anyone squarely, as she stands there falsely
motionless, falsely silent.

   No one would need to teach her anything: neither to remain silent nor
how to keep her hands unclenched at her sides, nor indeed how to arch her
head half back.  O was dying to seize a handful of that too blond hair at
the nape of the neck, and pull her docile head all the way back, to run at
least her finger over the line of her eyebrows.  But Rene would want to do
it too.

   She was fully aware why she, once so daring and bold, had become so shy,
why she had wanted Jacqueline for two months without betraying it by the
least word or gesture, and giving herself lame excuses to explain her
timidity.  It was not true that Jacqueline was intangible.  The obstacle
was not in Jacqueline, it lay deep within O herself, its roots deeper than
anything she had ever before encountered.

   It was because Rene was leaving her free, and because she loathed her
freedom.  Her freedom was worse than any chains.  Her freedom was
separating her from Rene.  She, could have taken Jacqueline by the
shoulders any number of times and, without saying a word, pinned her
against the wall with her two hands, the way a butterfly is impaled;
Jacqueline would not have moved, and probably not even done so much as
smile.  But O was henceforth like those wild animals which have been taken
captive and either serve as decoys for the hunter or, leaping forward only
at the hunter's command, head off the game for him.  It was she who
sometimes leaned back against a wall, pale and trembling, stubbornly
impaled by her silence, bound there by her silence, so happy to remain
silent.  She was waiting for more than permission, since she already had
permission.  She was waiting for an order.  It came to her not from Rene,
but from Sir Stephen.

   As the months went by since the day Rene had given her to Sir Stephen, O
was terrified O note the growing importance Sir Stephen was assuming in her
lover's eyes.

   Moreover, she realized at the same time that, in this matter, she was
perhaps mistaken, imagining a progression in the fact or the feeling where
actually the only progression had been in the acknowledgment of this fact
or the admission of this feeling.  Be that as it may, she had been quick to
note that Rene chose to spend with her those nights, and only those nights,
following those she had spent with Sir Stephen (Sir Stephen keeping her the
whole night only when Rene was away from Paris).  She also noticed that
when Rene remained for one of those evenings at Sir Stephen's he would
never touch O except to make her more readily available or an easier
offering to Sir.  Stephen, if she happened to be struggling.  It was
extremely rare for him to stay, and he never did unless at Sir Stephen's
express request Whenever he did, he remained fully dressed, as he had done
the first time, keeping quiet, lighting one cigarette after another, adding
wood to the fire, serving Sir Stephen something to drink--but not drinking
himself.  O felt that he was watching her the way a lion trainer watches
the animal he has trained, careful to see that it performs with complete
obedience and thus does honor to him, but even more the way a prince's
bodyguard or a bandit's second-in-command keeps an eye on the prostitute he
has gone down to fetch in the street.  The proof that he was indeed
yielding to the role of servant or acolyte resided in the fact that he
watched Sir Stephen's face more closely than he did hers--and beneath his
gaze O felt herself stripped of the very voluptuousness in which her
features were immersed: for this sensual pleasure Rene paid obeisance,
expressed admiration and even gratitude to Sir Stephen, who had engendered
it, pleased that he had deigned to take pleasure in something he had given
him.

   Everything would probably have been much simpler if Sir Stephen had
liked boys, and O did not doubt that Rene, who was not so inclined, still
would have readily granted to Sir Stephen both the slightest and the most
demanding of his requests.  But Sir Stephen only liked women.  O realized
that through the medium of her body, shared between them, they attained
something more mysterious and perhaps more acute, more intense than an
amorous communion, the very conception of which was arduous but whose
reality and force she could not deny.  Still, why was this division in a
way abstract?  At Roissy, O had, at the same time and in the same place,
belonged both to Rene and to other men.  Why did Rene, in Sir Stephen's
presence, refrain not only from taking her, but from giving her any orders?
(All he ever did was pass on Sir Stephen's.) She asked him why, certain
beforehand of the reply.

   "Out of respect," Rene replied.

   "But I belong to you," O said.

   "You belong to Sir Stephen first.  And it was true, at least in the
sense that when Rene had surrendered her to his friend the surrender had
been absolute, that Sir Stephen's slightest desires took precedence over
Rene's decisions as far as she was concerned, and even over her own.  If
Rene had decided that they would dine together and go to the theater, and
Sir Stephen happened to phone an hour before he was to pick up O, Rene
would come by for her at the studio as agreed, but only to drive her to Sir
Stephen's door and leave her there.  Once, and only once, O had asked Rene
to please ask Sir Stephen to change the day, because she so much wanted to
go with Rene to a party to which they were both invited Rene had refused.

   "My sweet angel," he had said, "you, mean you still haven't understood
that you no longer belong to me, that I'm no longer the master who's in
charge of you?"

   Not only had he refused, but he had told Sir Stephen of O's request and,
in her presence, asked him to punish her harshly enough so that she would
never again dare even to conceive of shirking her duties.  "Certainly," Sir
Stephen had replied.

   The scene had taken place in the little oval room with the inlaid floor,
in which the only piece of furniture was a table encrusted with
mother-ofpearl, the room adjoining, the yellow and gray living room.  Rene
remained only long enough to betray O and hear Sir Stephen's reply.  Then
he shook hands with him, smiled at O, and left.

   Through the window, O saw him crossing the courtyard; he did not turn
around; she heard the car door slam shut, the roar of the motor, and in a
little mirror imbedded in the wall she caught a glimpse of her own image:
she was white with fear and despair.

   Then, mechanically, when she walked past Sir Stephen, who opened the
living room door for her and stood back for her to pass, she looked at him:
he was as pale as she.  In a flash, she was absolutely certain that he
loved her, but it was a fleeting certainty that vanished as fast as it had
come.

   Although she did not believe it and chided herself for having thought of
it, she was comforted by it and undressed meekly, on a mere signal from
him. Then, and for the first time since he had been making her come two or
three times a week, and using her slowly, sometimes making her wait for an
hour naked without coming near her, listening to her entreaties without
ever replying, for there were times when she did beg and beseech, enjoining
her to do the same things always at the same moments, as in a ritual, so
that she knew when her mouth was supposed to caress him and when, on her
knees, her head buried in the silken sofa, she should offer him only her
back, which he now possessed without hurting her, for the first time, for
in spite of the fear which convulsed her--or perhaps because of that
fear--she opened to him, in spite of the chagrin she felt at Rene's
betrayal, but perhaps too because of it, she surrendered herself
completely. And for the first time, so gentle were her yielding eyes when
they fastened on Sir Stephen's pale, burning gaze, that he suddenly spoke
to her in French, employing the familiar tu form with her:

   "I'm going to put a gag in your mouth, O, because I'd like to whip you
till I draw blood.

   Do I have your permission?"

   "I'm yours," O said.

   She was standing in the middle of the drawing room, and her arms, raised
and held together by the Roissy bracelets, which were attached by a chain
to a ring in the ceiling from which a chandelier had formerly hung, thrust
her breasts forward.  Sir Stephen caressed them, then kissed them, then
kissed her mouth, once, ten times.  (He had never kissed her.) And when he
had put on the gag, which filled her mouth with the taste of wet canvas
pushed her tongue to the back of her throat, the gag so arranged that she
could scarcely clench it in her teeth, he took her gently by the hair. 
Held in equilibrium by the chain, she stumbled on her bare feet.

   "Excuse me, O," he murmured (he had never before begged her pardon),
then he let her go, and struck.

   When Rene returned to O's apartment after midnight, after having gone
alone to the party they had intended to go to together, he found her in
bed, trembling in the white nylon of her long nightgown.  Sir Stephen had
brought her home and put her to bed himself and kissed her again.  She told
Rene that She also told him that she no longer had any inclination not to
obey Sir Stephen, realizing full well that from this Rene would conclude
that she deemed it essential, and even pleasant, to be beaten (which was
true; but this was not the only reason).

   What she was also certain of was that it was equally essential to Rene
that she be beaten.  He was as horrified at the idea of striking her--so
much so that he had never been able to bring himself to do it--as he
enjoyed seeing her struggle and hearing her scream.  Once, in his presence,
Sir Stephen had used the riding crop on her.  Rene had forced O back
against the table and held her there, motionless.  Her skirt had slipped
down; he had lifted it up.

   Perhaps he needed even more to know that while he was not with her,
while he was away walking or working, O was writhing, moaning, and crying
beneath the whip, was asking for his pity and not obtaining it--and was
aware that this pain and humiliation had been inflicted on her by the will
of the lover whom she loved, and for his pleasure.  At Roissy, he had had
her flogged by the valets.  In Sir Stephen he had found the stern master he
himself was unable to be.  The fact that the man he most admired, in the
world could take a fancy to her and take the trouble to tame her, only made
Rene's passion all the greater, as O could plainly see.  AU the mouths that
had probed her mouth, all the hands that had seized her breasts and her
belly, all the members that had been thrust into her and so perfectly
provided the living proof that she was indeed prostituted, had at the same
time provided the proof that she was worthy of being prostituted and had,
so to speak, sanctified her.  But this, in Rene's eyes, was nothing
compared to the proof Sir Stephen provided.  Each time she emerged from his
arms, Rene looked for the mark of a god upon her.  O knew full well that if
he had betrayed her a few hours before, it was in order to provoke new, and
more cruel, marks.  And she also knew that, though the reasons for
provoking them might disappear, Sir Stephen would not turn back.  So, much
the worse.  (But to herself she was thinking the exact opposite.) Rene,
impressed and overwhelmed, gazed for a long time at the thin body marked by
thick, purple welts like so many ropes spanning the shoulders, the back,
the buttocks, the belly, and the breasts, welts which sometimes overlapped
and crisscrossed.

   Here and there a little blood still oozed.

   "Oh, how I love you," he murmured.

   With trembling hands he took off his clothes, turned out the light, and
lay down next to O.  She moaned in the darkness, all the time he possessed
her.

   The welts on O's body took almost a month to disappear.  In places where
the skin had been broken, she still bore the traces of slightly whiter
lines, like very old scars.  If ever she were inclined to forget where they
came from, the attitude of Rene and Sir Stephen were there to remind her.

   Rene, of course, had a key to O's apartment He hadn't thought to give
one to Sir Stephen, probably because, till now, Sir Stephen had not evinced
the desire to visit O's place.  But the fact that he had brought her home
that night suddenly made Rene realize that this door, which only he and O
could open, might be considered by Sir Stephen as an obstacle, a barrier,
or as a restriction deliberately imposed by Rene, and that it was
ridiculous to give him O if he did not at the same time give him the
freedom to come and go at O's whenever he pleased.  In short, he had a key
made, gave it to Sir Stephen, and told O only after Sir Stephen had
accepted it She did not dream of protesting, and she soon discovered that,
while she was waiting for Sir Stephen to appear, she felt incomprehensibly
peaceful.  She waited for a long time, wondering whether he would surprise
her by coming in the middle of the night, whether he would take advantage
of one of Rene's absences, whether he would come alone, or indeed whether
he would even come at all.  She did not dare speak about it to Rene.  One
morning when the cleaning woman happened not to be there and O had gotten
up earlier than usual and, at ten o'clock, was already dressed and ready to
go out, she heard a key turning in the lock and flew to the door shouting:
"Rene" (for there were times when Rene did arrive in this way and at this
hour, and she had not dreamed it could be anyone' but he).  It was Sir
Stephen, who smiled and said to her: "All right, why don't we call up
Rene."

   But Rene, tied up at his office by a business appointment, would be
there only in an hour's time.

   O, her heart pounding wildly (and she wondering why), watched Sir
Stephen hang up.

   He sat her down on the bed, took her head in both his hands, and forced
her mouth open slightly in order to kiss her.  She was so out of breath
that she might have slipped and fallen if he had not held her.  But he did
hold her, and straightened her up.

   She could not understand why her throat was knotted by such a feeling of
anxiety and anguish, for, after all, what did she have to fear from Sir
Stephen that she had not already experienced?  He bade her remove all her
clothes, and watched her, without saying a word, as she obeyed.  Wasn't
she, in fact, quite accustomed to being naked beneath his gaze, as she was
accustomed to his silence, as she was accustomed to waiting for him to
decide what his pleasure would be?  She had to admit she had been deceiving
herself, and that if she was taken aback by the time and the place, by the
fact that she had never been naked in this room for anyone except Rene, the
basic reason for her being upset was actually still the same: her own
self-consciousness.  The only difference was that this selfconsciousness
was made all the more apparent to her because it was not taking place in
some specific spot to which she had to repair in order to submit to it, and
not at night, thereby partaking of a dream or of some clandestine existence
in relation to the length of the day, as Roissy had been in relation to the
length of her life with Rene.

   The bright light of a May day turned the clandestine into something
public: henceforth the reality of the night and the reality of day would be
one and the same.

   Henceforth--and O was thinking' at last This is doubtless the source of
that strange sentiment of security, mingled with terror, to which she felt
she was surrendering herself and of which, without understanding it, she
had had a premonition.  Henceforth there were no more hiatuses, no dead
time, no remission, He whom one awaits is, because he is expected, already
present, already master.

   Sir Stephen was a far more demanding but also a far surer master than
Rene.  And however passionately O loved Rene, and he her, there was between
them a kind of equality (were it only the equality of age) which eliminated
in her any feeling of obedience, the awareness of her submission.  Whatever
he wanted of her she wanted too, solely because he was asking it of her. 
But it was as though he had instilled in her, insofar as Sir Stephen was
concerned, his own admiration, his own--respect She obeyed Sir Stephen's
orders as orders about which there was no question, and was grateful to him
for having given them to her.  Whether he addressed her in French or
English, employed the familiar tu or the less personal vous form with her,
she, like a stranger or a servant, never addressed him as anything but Sir
Stephen.  She told herself that the term "Lord" would have been more
appropriate, if she had dared utter it, as he, in referring to her, would
have been better advised to employ the word "slave." She also told herself
that all was well, since Rene was happy loving in her Sir Stephen's slave.

   And so, her clothes neatly arranged at the foot of the bed, having again
put on her high-heeled mules, she waited, with lowered eyes, facing Sir
Stephen, who was leaning against the window Bright sunlight was streaming
through the dotted muslin curtains and gently warmed her hips and thighs.
She was not looking for any special effect, but it immediately occurred to
her that she should have put on more perfume, she realized that she had not
made up the tips of her breasts, and that, luckily, she had on her mules,
for the nail polish on her toenails was beginning to peel off.  Then she
suddenly knew that what she was in fact waiting for in this silence, and
this light, was for Sir Stephen to make some signal to her, or for him to
order her to kneel down before him, unbutton him, and caress him.

   But no.  Because she alone had been the one to whom such a thought had
occurred, she turned scarlet, and as she was blushing she was thinking what
a fool she was to blush: such modesty and shame in a whore!

   Just then, Sir Stephen asked O to sit down before her dressing table and
hear what he had to say.  The dressing table was not, properly speaking, a
dressing table, but next to a low ledge set into the wall, on which were
arranged brushes and bottles, a large Restoration swing-mirror in which O,
seated in her low-slung chair, could see herself full length.

   Sir Stephen paced back and forth behind her as he talked; from time to
time his reflection crossed the mirror, behind the image of O, but his was
a reflection which seemed far away, because the silvering of the mirror was
discolored and slightly murky.

   O, her hands unclasped and her knees apart, had an urge to seize the
reflection and stop it, in order to reply more easily.  For Sir Stephen,
speaking in a clipped English, was asking question after question, the last
questions O would ever have dreamed he would ask, even assuming he would
ask any in the first place.  Hardly had he begun, however, when he broke
off to settle O deeper and farther back in the chair; with her left leg
over the arm of the chair and the other curled up slightly, O, in that bath
of bright light, was then presented, to her own eyes and to Sir Stephen's,
as perfectly open as though an invisible lover had withdrawn from her and
left her slightly ajar.

   Sir Stephen resumed his questioning, with a judgelike resolution and the
skill of a father-confessor.  O did not see him speaking, and saw herself
replying.

   Whether she had, since she had returned from Roissy, belonged to other
men besides Rene and himself?  No.  Whether she had wanted to belong to any
other she might have met?  No.

   Whether she caressed herself at night, when she was alone?  No.  Whether
she had any girl friends she caressed or who she allowed to caress her?  No
(the "no" was more hesitant).  Any girl friends she did desire?  Well,
there was Jacqueline, but "friend" was stretching the term.  Acquaintance
would be closer, or even chum, the way well-bred schoolgirls refer to each
other in high-class boarding schools.

   Whereupon Sir Stephen asked her whether she had any photographs of
Jacqueline, and he helped her to her feet so she could go and get them.  It
was in the living room that Rene, entering out of breath, for he had dashed
up the four flights of stairs, came upon them: O was standing in front of
the big table on which there shone, black and white, like puddles of water
in the night, all of the pictures of Jacqueline.  Sir Stephen, half-seated
on the table, was taking them one by one as O handed them to him, and
putting them back on the table; his other hand was holding O's womb.  From
that moment on, Sir Stephen, who had greeted Rene without letting go of
her- in fact she felt his hand probe deeper into her--had ceased addressing
her, and addressed himself to Rene.  She thought she knew why: with Rene
there, the accord between Sir Stephen and Rene concerning her was
reestablished, but apart from her, she was only the occasion for it or the
object of it, they no longer had to question her, nor she to reply; what
she had to do, and even what she had to.  be, was decided without her.

   It was almost noon.  The sun, falling directly on the table, curled the
edges of the photographs.  O wanted to move them and flatten them out to
keep them from being ruined, but her fingers fumbled, she was on the verge
of yielding to the burning probe of Sir Stephen's hand and allowing a moan
to escape from her lips.  She failed to hold it back, did in fact moan, and
found herself sprawled fiat on her back among the photographs, where Sir
Stephen had rudely shoved her as he left her, with her legs spread and
dangling.  Her feet were not touching the floor; one of her mules slipped
from her foot and dropped noiselessly onto the white rug.  Her face was
flooded with sunshine: she closed her eyes.

   Later, much later, she must have remembered overhearing the conversation
between Sir Stephen and Rene, but at the time she was not struck by it, as
though it did not concern her and, simultaneously, as though she had
already experienced It before.  And it was true that she had already
experienced a similar scene, since the first time that Rene had taken her
to Sir Stephen's, they had discussed her in the same way.  But on that
initial occasion she had been a stranger to Sir Stephen, and Rene had done
most of the talking.  Since then, Sir Stephen had made her submit to all
his fantasies, had molded her to his own taste, had demanded and obtained
from her, as something quite routine, the most outrageous and scurrilous
acts.  She had nothing more to give than what he already possessed.  At
least so she thought.  He was speaking, he who generally was silent in her
presence, and his remarks, as well as Rene's, revealed that they were
renewing a conversation they often engaged in together, with her as the
subject.  It was a question of how she could best be utilized, and how the
things each of them had learned from his particular use of her could best
be shared.  Sir Stephen readily admitted that O was infinitely more moving
when her body was covered with marks, of whatever kind, if only because
these marks made it impossible for her to cheat and immediately proclaimed,
the moment they were seen, that anything went as far as she was concerned.
For to know this was one thing, but to see the proof of it, and to see the
proof constantly renewed, was quite another.

   Rene, Sir Stephen said, was perfectly right in wishing to have her
whipped.  They decided that she would be, irrespective of the pleasure they
might derive from her screams and tears, as often as necessary so that some
trace of the flogging could always be seen upon her.

   O, still lying motionless on her back, her loins still aflame, was
listening, and she had the feeling that by some strange substitution Sir
Stephen was speaking for her, in her place.  As though he was somehow in
her body and could feel the anxiety, the anguish, and the shame, but also
the secret pride and harrowing pleasure that she was feeling, especially
when she was alone in a crowd of strangers, of passers-by in the street, or
when she got into a bus, or when she was at the studio with the models and
technicians, and she told herself that any and all of these people she was
with, if they should have an accident and have to be laid down on the
ground or if a doctor had to be called, would keep their secrets, even if
they were unconscious and naked; but not she: her secret did not depend
upon her silence alone, did not depend on her alone.

   Even if she wanted to, she could not indulge in the slightest caprice
and that was indeed the meaning of one of Sir Stephen's questions--without
immediately revealing herself, she could not allow herself to partake of
the most innocent acts, such as playing tennis or swimming.  That these
things were forbidden her was a comfort to her, a material comfort, as the
bars of the convent materially prevent the cloistered girls from belonging
to one another, and from escaping.  For this reason too, how could, she run
the risk that Jacqueline would not spurn her, with--cut at the same time
running the risk of having to explain the truth to Jacqueline, or at least
part of the truth?

   The sun had moved and left her face.  Her shoulders were sticking to the
glossy surface of the photographs on which she was lying, and against her
knee she could feel the rough edge of Sir Stephen's suit coat, for he had
come back beside her.  He and Rene each took her by one hand and helped her
to her feet Rene picked up one of her mules.  It was time for her to get
dressed.

   It was during the lunch that followed, at Saint-Cloud on the barks of
the Seine, that Sir Stephen, who had remained alone with her, began to
question her once again.  The restaurant tables, covered with white
tablecloths, were arranged on a shaded terrace which was bordered by privet
hedges, at the foot of which was a bed of dark red, scarcely opened
peonies.

   Even before Sir Stephen could make a sign to her, O had obediently
lifted her skirts as she sat down on the iron chair, and it had taken her
bare thighs a long time to warm the cold iron.  They heard the water
slapping against the boats tied up to the wooden jetty at the end of the
terrace.  Sir Stephen was seated across from her, and O was speaking
slowly, determined not to say anything that was not true.

   What Sir Stephen wanted to know was why she liked Jacqueline.  Oh!  that
was easy: it was because she was too beautiful for O, like the full-sized
dolls given to the poor children for Christmas, which they're afraid to
touch.

   And yet she knew that if she had not spoken to her, and had not accosted
her, it was because she really didn't want to.  As she said this she raised
her eyes, which had been lowered, fixed on the bed of peonies, and she
realized that Sir Stephen was staring at her lips.  Was he listening to
what she was saying, or was he merely listening to the sound of her voice
or watching the movement of her lips?  Suddenly she stopped speaking, and
Sir Stephen's gaze rose and intercepted her own.  What she read in it was
so clear this time, and it was so obvious to him that she had seen it, that
now it was his turn to blanch.

   If indeed he did love her, would he ever forgive her for having noticed
it?  She could neither avert her gaze nor smile, nor speak.  Had her life
depended on it, she would have been incapable of making a gesture,
incapable of fleeing, her legs would never have carried her.  He would
probably never want anything from her save her submission to his desire, as
long as he continued to desire her.  But was desire sufficient to explain
the fact that, from the day Rene had handed her over to him, he asked for
her and kept her more and more frequently, sometimes merely to have her
with him, without asking anything from her?

   There he sat across from her, silent and motionless.  Some businessmen,
at a neighboring table, were talking as they drank a coffee so black and
aromatic that the aroma was wafted all the way to their own table.

   Two well-groomed, contemptuous Americans lighted cigarettes halfway
through their meal; the gravel crunched beneath the waiters' feet--one of
them came over to refill Sir Stephen's glass, which was three-quarters
empty, but what was the point of wasting good wine on a statue, a
sleepwalker?  The waiter did not belabor the point.

   O was delighted to feel that if his gray, ardent gaze wandered from her
eyes, it was to fasten on her breasts, her hands, before returning to her
eyes.  Finally she saw the trace of a smile appear on his lips, a smile she
dared to answer.  But utter a single word, impossible!  She could scarcely
breathe.

   "O Sir Stephen said,

   "Yes," O said, faintly.

   '.O, what I'm going to speak to you about I have already discussed with
Rene and we're both in accord on it.  But also, I..." He broke off.

   O never knew whether it was because, seized by a sudden chill, she had
closed her eyes, or whether he too had difficulty catching his breath.  He
paused; the waiter was changing the plates, bringing O the menu so she
could choose the dessert.

   O handed it to Sir Stephen.  A souffl ?  Yes, a souffl .  It will take
twenty minutes.  All right, twenty minutes.  The waiter left.

   "I need more than twenty minutes," Sir Stephen said.  And he went on in
a steady voice, and what he said quickly convinced O, that one thing at
least was certain, and that was, if' he did love her, nothing would be
changed, unless one considered this curious respect a change, this ardor
with which he was saying to her: "I'd be most pleased if you would care to
. . .  ," instead of simply asking her to accede to his requests.  Yet they
were still orders, and there was no question of O's not obeying them.  She
pointed this out to Sir Stephen.  He admitted as much.

   "I still want you to answer," he said.

   "I'll do whatever you like," O responded, and the echo of what she was
saying resounded in her memory: "I'll do whatever you like," she was used
to saying to Rene, the only difference being her use of the tu form with
Rene.  Almost in a whisper, she murmured: "Rene..,' Sir Stephen heard it'
"Rene knows what I want from you.  Listen to me."

   He was speaking English, but in a low, carefully controlled voice which
was inaudible at' the neighboring tables.  Whenever the waiters approached
their table, he fell silent, resuming his sentence where he had left off as
soon as they had moved away.  What he was saying seemed strange and out of
keeping with this peaceful, public place, and yet what was strangest of all
was that he could say it, and O hear it, so naturally.

   He began by reminding her that the first evening when she had come to
his apartment he had given her an order she had refused to obey, and he
noted that although he might have slapped her then, he had never repeated
the order since that night Would she grant him now what she had refused him
then?  O understood that not only must she acquiesce, but that he wanted to
hear her say it herself, in her own words, say that she would caress
herself any time he asked her to.  She said it, and again she saw the
yellow and gray drawing room, Rene's departure from: it, her revulsion that
first evening, the fire glowing between her open knees when she was lying
naked on the rug.  Tonight, in this same drawing room ...  No, Sir Stephen
had not specified, and was going on.

   He also pointed out to her that she had never been possessed in his
presence by Rene (or by anyone else), as she had been by him in Rene's
presence (and at Roissy by a whole host of others).  From this she should
not conclude that Rene would be the only one to humiliate her by handing
her over to a man who did not love her--and perhaps derive pleasure from
it--in the presence of a man who did.  (He went on at such length, and with
such cruelty--she soon would open her thighs and back, and her mouth, to
those of his friends who, once they had met her, might desire her--that O
suspected that this coarseness was aimed as much at himself as it was at
her, and the only thing she remembered was the end of the sentence: in the
presence of a man who did love her.  What more did she want in the way of a
confession?) What was more, he would bring her back to Roissy sometime in
the course of the summer.

   Hadn't it ever struck her as surprising, this isolation in which first
Renee, then he, had kept her?  They were the only men she saw, either
together, or one after the other.

   Whenever Sir Stephen had invited people to his apartment on the rue de
Poitiers, O was never invited.  She had never lunched or dined at his
place. Nor had Rene ever introduced her to any of his friends, except for
Sir Stephen.  In all probability he would continue to keep her in the
background, for to Sir Stephen was henceforth reserved the privilege of
doing as he liked with her.  But she should not get the idea that she
belonged to him, that she would be detained more legally on the contrary.
(But what hurt and wounded O most was the realization that Sir Stephen was
going to treat her in exactly the same way Rene had, in the same, identical
way.) The iron and gold ring that she was wearing on her left hand--and did
she recall that the ring had been chosen so tight-fitting that they had had
to force it on her ring finger?  She could not take it off--that ring was
the sign that she was a slave, but one who was common property.  It had
been merely by chance that, since this past autumn, she had not met any
Roissy members who might have noticed her irons, or revealed that they had
noticed them.  The word irons, used in the plural, which she had taken to
be an equivocal term when Sir Stephen had told her that irons were becoming
to her, had in no wise been equivocal; it had been a mode of recognition, a
password.  Sir Stephen had not had to use the second formula: namely, whose
irons was she wearing?  But if today this question were asked of O, what
would she reply?  O hesitated.

   "Rene's and yours," she said.

   "No," Sir Stephen said, "mine.  Rene wants you to be answerable first of
all to me.

   O was fully cognizant of this, why did she pretend she was not?  In a
short while, and in any case prior to her return to Roissy, she would have
to accept a definitive mark, which would not absolve her from the
obligation of being a common-property slave but would, besides, reveal her
to be a personal slave, Sir Stephen's, and the tracks of the floggings on
her body, or the marks raised by the riding crop, if indeed they were
inflicted again, would be discreet and futile compared to this ultimate
mark.  (But what would this mark be, of what would it consist, in what way
would it be definitive?  O, terrified and fascinated, was dying to know,
she had to know immediately.  But it was obvious that Sir Stephen was not
yet ready to explain it And it was true that she had to accept, to consent
in the real sense of the term, for nothing would be inflicted upon her by
force to which she had not already previously consented; she could refuse,
nothing was keeping her enslaved except her love and her self-enslavement
What prevented her from leaving?) And yet, before this mark was imposed
upon her, even before Sir Stephen became accustomed to flogging her, as had
been decided by Rene and himself, to flogging her in such a way that the
traces were constantly visible, she would be granted a reprieve--the time
required for her to make Jacqueline submit to her.

   Stunned, O raised her head and looked at Sir Stephen.  Why?  Why
Jacqueline?  And if Jacqueline interested Sir Stephen, why was it in
relation to O?

   "There are two reasons," Sir Stephen said.  "The first, and least
important, is that I would like to see you kiss and caress a woman.  But
even assuming she gives in to me,' cried O, how in the world do you expect
me to make her consent to your being present?"

   "That's the least of my worries," Sir Stephen said.  "If necessary, by
betray, and anyway I'm counting on you for a great deal more than that, for
the second reason why I want you to seduce her is that you're to be the
bait that lures her to Roissy."

   O set down the cup of coffee she was holding in her hand, shaking so
violently that she spilled the viscous dregs of coffee and sugar at the
bottom of the cup.  Like a soothsayer, she saw unbearable images in the
spreading brown stain on the tablecloth: Jacqueline's glazed eyes
confronting the valet Pierre; her flanks, doubtless as golden as her
breasts, though O had never seen them, exposed to view below the folds of
her long red velvet dress with its tucked-up skirt; her downy cheeks
stained with tears and her painted mouth open and screaming, and her
straight hair, in a Dutch bob along her forehead, straight as new-mown
hay--no, it was impossible, not her, not Jacqueline.

   "No, it's out of the question," she said.

   "Of course it's not," Sir Stephen retorted.  "How do you think girls are
recruited for Roissy?  Once you have brought her there, the matter will be
completely out of your hands, and anyway, if she wants to leave she can
leave.  Come along now."

   He had gotten suddenly to his feet, leaving the money for the bill on
the table.  O followed him to the car, climbed in, and sat down.

   Scarcely had they entered the Bois de Boulogne when he turned in to a
side road, stopped the car in a narrow lane, and took her in his arms.

   III Anne-Marie and the Rings

   O had believed, or wanted to believe, in order to give herself a good
excuse, that Jacqueline would be uncommonly shy.  She was enlightened on
this score the moment she decided to open her eyes.  The modest air
Jacqueline assumed--closing the door to the mirrored make-up room where she
dressed and undressed--was in fact clearly intended to inflame O, to
instill in her the desire to force the door which, had it been left wide
open, she would never have made up her mind to enter.  That O's decision
finally came from an authority outside herself, and was not the result of
that basic strategy, could not have been further from Jacqueline's mind. 
At first O was amused by it.  As she helped Jacque line arrange her hair,
for example, after Jacqueline had taken off the clothes she had posed in
and was slipping into her turtle-neck sweater ,and the turquoise necklace
the same color as her eyes, O found herself amazingly de lighted at the
idea that the very same evening Sir Stephen would be apprised of
Jacqueline's every gesture--whether she had allowed O to fondle, through
the black sweater, her small, well-spaced breasts, whether she had lowered
her eyelids till those lashes, fairer than her skin, were touching her
cheeks; whether she had sighed or moaned.  When O embraced her, she became
heavy, motionless, and seemingly expectant in her arms, her lips parted
slightly and her hair cascaded back.  O always had to be careful to hold
her by both her shoulders and lean her up against the frame of a door or
against a table.  Otherwise she would have slipped to the floor, her eyes
closed, without a sound.  The minute O let go of her, she would again turn
into ice and snow, laughing and distant, and would say: "You've got
lipstick on me,"

   and would wipe her mouth.  It was this distant stranger that O enjoyed
betraying by carefully noting--so as not to forget anything and be able to
relate everything in detail--the slow flush of her cheeks, the smell of
sage and sweat.  Of Jacqueline it was impossible to say that she was
forbearing or that she was on her guard.  When she yielded to the
kisses--and all she had so far granted O were kisses, which she accepted
without returning- she yielded abruptly and, it seemed, totally, as though
for ten seconds, or five minutes, she had become someone else.

   The rest of the time she was both coquettish and coy, incredibly clever
at parrying an attack, contriving never to lay herself open either to a
word or gesture, or even a look which would allow the victor to coincide
with the vanquished or give O to believe that it was all that simple to
take possession of her mouth.  The only indication one had as a guide, the
only thing that gave one to suspect troubled waters beneath the calm
surface of her look was an occasional, apparently involuntary trace of a
smile on her triangular face, similar to the smile of a cat, as fleeting
and as disturbing, and also as uncertain, as a cat's.  Yet it did not take
O long to realize that this smile could be provoked by two things, and
Jacqueline was totally unaware of either.  The first was the gifts that
were given to her, the second, any clear evidence of the desire she
aroused--' providing, however, that the person who desired her was someone
who might be useful to her or who flattered her vanity.  In what way was O
useful to her?  Or was it simply that O was an exception and that
Jacqueline enjoyed being desired by O both because she took solace in O's
manifest admiration and also because a woman's desire is harmless and of no
consequence?  Still in all, O was convinced that if, instead of bringing
Jacqueline a mother-of-pearl brooch or the latest creation of Hermes'
scarves, on which I Love You was printed in every language under the sun,
she were to offer Jacqueline the hundred or two hundred francs she seemed
constantly to need, Jacqueline would have changed her tune about never
having the time to have lunch or tea at O's place, or would have stopped
evading her caresses.

   But of this O never had any proof.  She had only barely mentioned it to
Sir Stephen, who was chiding her for her slowness, when Rene stepped in. 
The five or six times that Rene had come by for O, when Jacqueline had
happened to be there, the three of them had gone together to the Weber bar
or to one of the English bars in the vicinity of the Madeleine; on these
occasions Rene would contemplate Jacqueline with precisely the same mixture
of interest, self-assurance, and arrogance with which he would gaze, at
Roissy, at the girls who were completely at his disposal.  The arrogance
slid harmlessly off Jacqueline's solid, gleaming armor, and Jacqueline was
not even aware of it.  By a curious contradiction, O was disturbed by it,
judging an attitude which she considered quite natural and normal for
herself, insulting for Jacqueline.  Was she taking up cudgels in defense of
Jacqueline, or was it merely that she wanted her all to herself?  She would
have been hard put to answer that question, all the more so because she did
not have her all to herself--at least not yet.  But if she finally did
succeed, she had to admit that it was thanks to Rene.  On three occasions,
upon leaving the bar where they had given Jacqueline considerably more
whisky than she should have drunk--her cheeks were flushed and shining, her
eyes hard--he had driven her home before taking O to Sir Stephen's.

   Jacqueline lived in one of those lugubrious Passy lodging houses into
which hordes of White Russians had piled immediately following the
Revolution, and from which they had never moved.  The entrance hall was
painted in Imitation oak, and on the stairway the spaces between the
banisters were covered with dust, and the green carpeting had been worn
down till it was threadbare in many places.  Each time Rene wanted to come
in--and to date he had never got beyond the front door--Jacqueline would
jump out of the car, cry not tonight" or "thanks so much," and slam the car
door behind her as though she had suddenly been burned by some tongue of
flame.  And it was true, O would say to herself, that she was being pursued
by fire.  It was admirable that Jacqueline had sensed it, even though she
had no concrete evidence of it as yet At least she realized that she had to
be on her guard with Rene, whose detachment did not seem to affect her in
the' slightest (or did it?  and as far as seeming unaffected, two could
play at that game, and Rene was a worthy opponent for her).

   The only time that Jacqueline let O come into the house and follow her
up to her room, O had understood why she had so adamantly refused Rene
permission to set foot in the house.  What would have happened to her
prestige, her black-and-white legend on the slick pages of the posh fashion
magazines, if someone other than a woman like herself had seen the sordid
lair from which the glorious creature issued forth every day?  The bed was
never made, at most the bedclothes were more or less pulled up, and the
sheet which was visible was dirty and greasy, for Jacqueline never went to
bed without massaging her face with cold cream, and she fell asleep too
quickly to think of wiping it off.  Sometime in the past a curtain had
apparently partitioned off the toilet from the room: all that remained, on
the triangular shaped curtain rod were two rings and a few shreds of cloth.
The color was faded from everything: from the rug, from the wallpaper whose
pink and gray flowers were crawling upward like vegetation gone wild and
become petrified on the imitation white trellis.  One would have had to
throw everything out and start again from scratch: scrape off the
wallpaper, throw out the rug, sand the floors.  But without waiting for
that, one could in any case have cleaned off dirt that, like so many
strata, ringed the enamel of the basin, immediately wiped off and put into
some kind of order the bottles of makeup remover and the jars of cream,
cleaned up the powder box, wiped off the dressing table, thrown out the
dirty cotton, opened the windows.  But, straight and cool and clean and
smelling of eau de Cologne and wild flowers, dirt-proof and impeccable,
Jacqueline could not have cared less about her filthy room.  What she did
care about, however, what caused her no end of concern, was her family.

   It was because of her hovel, which O was frank enough to have mentioned
to Rene--that Rend made a proposal which was to alter their lives, but it
was because of her family that Jacqueline accepted.  Rene's suggestion was
that Jacqueline should come and live with O.  "Family" was a gross,
misunderstatement: it was a clan, or rather a horde.  Grandmother, mother,
aunt, and even a maid--four women ranging in age from fifty to seventy,
strident, heavily made up, smothered beneath their onyx and their black
silks, sobbing and wailing at four in the morning in the faint red light of
the icons, with the cigarette smoke swirling thickly about them, four women
drowning in the clicking of tea glasses and the harsh hissing of a
language' Jacqueline would gladly have given half her life to forget she
was going out of her mind having to submit to their orders, to listen to
them, merely having to see them.

   Whenever she saw her mother lifting a piece of sugar to her mouth before
drinking her tea, Jacqueline would set down her own glass and retreat to
her dry' and dusty pigsty, leaving all three of them behind, her
grandmother, her mother, and her mother's sister, with their hair dyed
black, their closely knit eyebrows, and their wide, doe-like, disapproving
eyes--there in her mother's room which doubled as a living room, there
where, besides, the fourth female, the maid, ended by resembling them.  She
fled, banging the doors behind her, and they called after her: "Choura,
Choura, little dove," just as in the novels of Tolstoy, for her name was
not Jacqueline.  Jacqueline was her professional name, a name chosen to
forget her real name, and with it this sordid but tender gynaeceum, and to
set herself up in the French sun, in a solid world where there are men who
do marry you and not disappear, as had the father she had never known, into
the vast Arctic wastes from which he had never returned.  She took after
him completely, she used to tell herself with a mixture of anger and
delight, she had his hair and high cheekbones, his complexion and his
slanting eyes.  All she was grateful for to her mother was having given her
this blond devil as a father, this demon whom the snows had reclaimed as
the earth reclaims other men.  What she resented was that her mother had
forgotten him quickly enough to have given birth one fine day to a
darkcomplexioned little girl, the issue of a short-lived liaison, her
half-sister by an unknown father whose name was Natalie.  Now fifteen,
Natalie only saw them during vacation.  Her father, never.  But he provided
for Natalie's room and board in a lycee not far from Paris, and gave her
mother a monthly stipend on which the three women and the maid--and even
Jacqueline till now--had subsisted, albeit poorly, in an idleness which to
them was paradise.  Whatever remained from Jacqueline's earnings as a
model, after she had bought her cosmetics and lingerie, and her shoes and
dresses--all of which came from the top fashion houses and were, even after
the discount she received as a model, frightfully expensive--was swallowed
by the gaping maw of the family purse and disappeared, God only knows
where.

   Obviously, Jacqueline could have chosen to have a lover to support her,
and she' had not lacked the opportunity.  She had in fact had a lover or
two, less because she liked them--not that she actually disliked them--than
because she wanted to prove to herself that she was capable of provoking
desire and inflaming a man to the point of love.  The only one of the two-
the second--who had been wealthy had made her a present of a very lovely
pearl with a slight pink tint which she wore on her left hand, but she had
refused to live with him, and since he had refused to marry her, she had
left him, with no great regrets, merely relieved that she was not pregnant
(she had thought she was, for several days had lived in a state of dread at
the idea).  No, to live with a lover was to lose face, to forsake one's
chances for the future, it was to do what her mother had done with
Natalie's father, and that was out of the question.

   With O, however, it was quite another matter.  A polite fiction made it
possible to pretend that Jacqueline was simply moving in with a girlfriend,
with whom she was going to share all costs.  O would be setting a dual
purpose, both playing the role of the lover who supports, or helps to
support, the girl he loves, and also the theoretically opposite role of
providing a moral guarantee.  Rene's presence was not official enough,
really, to compromise the fiction.  But who can say whether, behind
Jacqueline's decision, that very presence might not have been the real
motivation for her acceptance?  The fact remained that It was left up to O,
and to O alone, to present the matter to Jacqueline's mother.  Never.  had
O been more keenly aware of playing the role of traitor, of spy, never had
she felt so keenly she was the envoy of some criminal organization as when
she found herself in the presence of that woman, who thanked her for
befriending her daughter.  And at the same time, deep in her heart O was
repudiating her mission and the reasons which had brought her there.  Yes,
Jacqueline would move in with her, but never, never would O acquiesce so
completely to Sir Stephen as to deliver her into his hands.

   And yet!...  For no sooner had she moved into O's apartment where she
was assigned, at Rene's request, the bedroom he sometimes pretended to
occupy (pretended, given that he always slept in O's big bed), then O,
contrary to all expectations, was amazed to find herself obsessed with the
burning desire to have Jacqueline at any price, even If attaining her goal
meant handing her over to Sir Stephen.  After all, she rationalized to
herself, Jacqueline's beauty is quite sufficient protection for her, and
besides, why should I get involved in it anyway?  And what if she were to
be reduced to what I have been reduced to, is that really so
terrible?--scarcely admitting and yet overwhelmed to imagine, how sweet it
would be to see Jacqueline naked and defenseless beside her, and like her.

   The week Jacqueline moved in, her mother having given her full consent,
Rene proved to be exceedingly zealous, inviting them every other day to
dinner and taking them to the movies which, curiously enough, he chose from
among the detective pictures playing, tales of drug traffic and white
slavery.  He would sit down between them, gently hold hands with them both,
and not utter a word.  But whenever there was a scene of violence, O would
see him studying Jacqueline's face for the slightest trace of emotion.  All
you could see on it was a hint of disgust, revealed by the slight downward
pout at the corners of her mouth.

   Afterward he would drive them home in his convertible, with the top
down, and in the open car with the windows rolled down, the speed and the
night wind flattened Jacqueline's generous head of blond hair against her
cheeks and narrow forehead, and even blew it into her eyes.  She would toss
her head to smooth her hair back into place and would run her hand through
it the way boys do.

   Once she had accepted the fact that she was living with O and that O was
Rene's mistress, she consequently seemed to find Rene's little
familiarities quite natural.  It did not bother her in the least to have
Rene come into her room under the pretense of looking for some piece of
paper he had left there, and O knew that it was a pretense, for she had
personally emptied the drawers of the big Dutch writing desk, with its
elaborate pattern of inlay and its leather-lined leaf, which was always
open, a desk so utterly unlike Rene.  Why did he have it?  Who had he
gotten it from?  Its weighty elegance, its light-colored woods were the
only touch of wealth in the somewhat dark room which faced north and
overlooked the courtyard, and the steel gray of its walls and the cold,
highly waxed surface of the floor provided a sharp contrast with the
cheerful rooms which faced the river.  Well, there could be a virtue in
that: Jacqueline would not be happy there.  It would make it all the easier
for her to agree to share the two front rooms with O, to sleep with O, as
on the first day she had agreed to share the bathroom and kitchen, the
cosmetics, the perfumes, the meals.  In this, O was mistaken, Jacqueline
was profoundly and passionately attached to anything that belonged to
her--to her pink' pearl, for instance--and completely indifferent to
anything that was not hers.  Had she lived in a palace, it would have
interested her only if someone had told her: the palace is yours, and then
proved it by giving her a notarized deed.  She could not have cared less
whether the gray room was pleasant or not, and it was not to get away from
it that she climbed into O's bed.  Nor was it to show her gratitude to O,
for she in fact did not feel it though O ascribed the feeling to her and
was delighted to abuse it or think she was abusing it.  Jacqueline enjoyed
pleasure, and found it both expedient and pleasant to receive it from a
woman, in whose hands she was running no risks whatever.

   Five days after she had unpacked her suitcases, whose contents O had
helped her sort out and put away, when for the third time Rene had brought
them home about ten o'clock after having dined with them, and had then left
(as he had both other times), she simply appeared, naked and still wet from
her bath, in O's doorway and said to O:

   You're sure he's not coming back?" and without even waiting for her
answer, she slipped into the big bed.  She allowed herself to be kissed and
caressed, her eyes closed, not responding by a single caress; at first she
moaned faintly, hardly more than a whimper, then louder, still louder,
until finally she cried out.

   She fell asleep sprawled across the bed, her knees apart but her legs
fiat again on the bed, the upper part of her body slightly turned on one
side, her hands open, her body bathed in the bright light of the pink lamp.
Between her breasts a trace of sweat glistened.  O covered her and turned
out the light.  When, two hours later, she took her again, in the dark,
Jacqueline did not resist, but murmured: "Don't wear me out completely, I
have to get up early tomorrow."

   It was at this same time that Jacqueline, in addition to her
intermittent assignments as a model, began to engage in a more absorbing
but equally unpredictable career: she was signed up to play bit parts in
the movies.

   It was hard to tell whether she was proud of this or not, whether or not
she considered this the first step in a career which might lead to her
becoming famous.  In the morning she would drag herself out of bed more in
anger than with any show of enthusiasm, would take her shower, quickly make
herself up, for breakfast would accept only the large cup of black coffee
that O barely had time to make for her, and would let O kiss the tips of
her fingers, responding with no more than a mechanical smile and an
expression full of malice: O was soft and warm in her white vicuna dressing
gown, her hair combed, her face washed, looking for all the world like
someone who plans on going back to bed.  And yet such was not the case.  O
had not yet found the courage to explain why to Jacqueline.  The truth of
the matter was that every day, when Jacqueline left for the film studio at
Boulogne where her picture was being shot' at the same time as the children
left for school and the white-collar workers for their offices, O, who in
the past had indeed whiled away the morning in her apartment, also got
dressed.

   "I'm sending you my car," Sir Stephen had said, "to drive Jacqueline to
Boulogne, then it will come back to pick you up."

   Thus O found herself headed for Sir Stephen's place every morning when
the sun along the way was still striking the eastern facades; the other
walls were still cool in the shade, but in the gardens the shadows were
already growing shorter.

   At the rue de Poitiers, the housework was still not finished.  Norah,
the mulatto maid, would take O into the small bedroom where, the first
evening, Sir Stephen had left her alone to sleep and cry, wait till O had
put her gloves, her bag, and her clothes on the bed, and then she would
take them and put them away, in O's presence, in a closet to which she
alone had the key.  Then, having given O the patent-leather high-heeled
mules which made a sharp' clicking sound as she walked, Norah would precede
her, opening the doors as they went, till they reached Sir Stephen's study,
when she would stand aside to let O pass.

   O never got used to these preparations, and stripping in front of this
patient old woman, who never said a word to her.  and scarcely looked at
her, seemed to her as dangerous and formidable as being naked at Roissy in
the presence of the valets there.  On felt slippers, the old lady slipped
silently by like a nun.

   As she followed her, O could not take her eyes off the twin points of
her Madras kerchief and, every time she opened a door, off her thin,. 
swarthy hand on the porcelain handle, a hand that seemed as hard as wood.

   At the same time, by a feeling diametrically opposed to the terror she
inspired in her--a contradiction O was unable to explain--O experienced a
kind of pride that this servant of Sir Stephen (and just what was her
relation to Sir Stephen, and why had he entrusted her with this task as
costume and make-up assistant for which she seemed so poorly suited?) was a
witness to the fact that she too--like so many others, perhaps, whom she
had guided in the same way, and why should she think otherwise?--was worthy
of being used by Sir Stephen.  For perhaps Sir Stephen did love her,
without a doubt he did, and O sensed that the time was not far off when he
would no longer be content to let her suspect it but would declare it to
her--but to the very degree that his love and desire for her were
increasing, he was becoming more completely, more minutely, and more
deliberately exacting with her.  Thus retained by his side for whole
mornings, during which he sometimes scarcely touched her, wanting only to
be caressed by her, she did whatever he wanted of her with a sentiment that
must be qualified as gratitude, which was all the greater whenever his
request took the form of a command.  Each surrender was for her the pledge
that another surrender would be demanded of her, and she acquitted herself
of each as though of a duty performed; it was odd that she should have been
completely satisfied by it, and yet she was.

   Sir Stephen's office, situated directly above the yellow and gray
drawing room where he held sway in the evening, was smaller and had a lower
ceiling.  It contained neither settee nor sofa, only two Regency armchairs
upholstered in a tapestry with a floral pattern.  O sat in one
occasionally, but Sir Stephen generally preferred to keep her near at hand,
at arm's length, and while he was busy with other things, to none the less
have her seated on his desk, to his left.  The desk was set at right angles
to the wall, which allowed O to lean back against the shelves which
contained some dictionaries and leather-bound phone books.  The telephone
was snug against her left thigh, and every time the phone rang she jumped.
It was she who picked up the receiver and answered, saying: "May I ask
who's calling?" then either repeating the name out loud and passing the
receiver to Sir Stephen, or, if he signaled to her, making some excuse for
him.  Whenever he had a visitor, old Norah would announce him, Sir Stephen
would have him wait long enough for Norah to conduct O back to the room
where she had undressed and where, after Sir Stephen's visitor had left,
she would come to fetch her again when Sir Stephen rang for her, Since
Norah entered and left the study several times each morning, either to
bring Sir Stephen his coffee or to bring in the mail, to open or draw the
blinds or to empty the ash trays, and since she alone had the right to
enter and had been expressly instructed never to knock, and since, finally,
she always waited in silence whenever she had something to say, until Sir
Stephen spoke to her to ask her what it was she wanted, it so happened that
on one occasion when Norah came into the room O was bent over the desk with
her rear exposed, her head and arms against the leather top, waiting for
Sir Stephen to impale her.  She raised her head.  If Norah had not glanced
at her, and she invariably never did, that would have been the only
movement O would have made.  But this time it was obvious that Norah was
trying to catch O's eye.  Those black, beady eyes fastened on her own--and
it was impossible for O to tell whether they bespoke indifference or
not--those eyes set in a deeply furrowed, impassive face so bothered O that
she made a movement to try and get away from Sir Stephen.  He gathered what
it was all about, and with one hand pinned her waist to the table, while
prying her open with the other.  She who was constantly striving to
cooperate and do her best was now, quite involuntarily, tense and
contracted, and Sir Stephen was obliged to force his way.  Even when he had
done so, she felt that the ring of her buttocks was tightening around him,
and he had trouble forcing himself all the way into her.  He withdrew only
when he was certain he could come and go with ease.  Then, as he was on the
point of taking her again, he told Norah to wait and said that she could
help O get dressed when he had finished with her.  And yet' before he
dismissed her, he kissed O tenderly on the mouth.

   It was that kiss which, several days later, gave her the courage to tell
him that Norah frightened her.

   "I should hope so," he retorted.  "And when you wear my mark and my
irons, as I trust you soon will--if you will consent to it--you'll have
much more reason to be afraid of her."

   "Why?" O asked, and what mark and what irons?  I'm already wearing this
ring...

   "That's completely up to Anne-Marie, to whom in fact I've promised to
show you.  We're going to pay her a visit after lunch.  I trust you don't
mind?  She's a friend of mine, and you may have noted that' till now, I've
refrained from ever introducing you to my friends.  When Anne-Marie is
finished with you, I'll give you genuine reasons for being afraid of
Norah."

   O did not dare to pursue the matter any further.  This Anne-Marie whom
they had threatened her with intrigued her more than Norah.  Sir Stephen
had already mentioned her when they had lunched together at Saint-Cloud. 
And it was quite true that O knew none of Sir Stephen's friends, nor any of
his acquaintances.  In short' she was living in Paris locked in her secret
as though she had been locked in a brothel; the only persons who had the
key to her secret' Rene and Sir Stephen, at the same time had the only key
to her body.  She could not help thinking that the expression "open oneself
to someone,"

   which meant to give oneself, for her had only one meaning, a literal,
physical, and in fact absolute meaning, for she was in fact opening every
part of her body which was capable of being opened.  It also seemed to her
that this was her raison d'etre and that Sir Stephen, like Rene, intended
it should be, since whenever he spoke of his friends as he had done at
SaintCloud, it was to tell her that those to whom he might introduce her
would, needless to say, be free to dispose of her however they wished, if
indeed they did.  But in trying to visualize Anne-Marie and imagine what it
might be that Sir Stephen expected from Anne" Marie as far as she, O, was
concerned, O was completely at sea' and not even her experience at Roissy
was of any help to her.  Sir Stephen had also mentioned that he waited to
see her caress another woman; could that be it?  (But he had specified that
he was referring to Jacqueline ..) No, it wasn't that.  "To show your he
had just said.  Indeed.  But after she left Anne-Marie, O knew no more than
before.

   Anne-Marie lived not far from the Observatoire in Paris, in an apartment
flanked by a kind of large studio, on the top floor of a new building
overlooking the treetops.  She was a slender woman, the same age more or
less as Sir Stephen, and her black hair was streaked with gray.  Her eyes
were such a deep blue they looked black.  She offered O and Sir Stephen
some coffee, a very strong, bitter coffee which she served steaming hot in
tiny cups, and which reassured O.  When she had finished her coffee and got
up from her chair to put down her empty cup on a coffee table, AnneMarie
seized her by the wrist and, turning to Sir Stephen, said:

   "May I?"

   "Please do," Sir Stephen said.

   Then Anne-Marie, who till then had neither spoken to nor smiled at O,
even to greet her or to acknowledge Sir Stephen's introduction, said to her
softly, with a smile so tender one would have thought she were giving her a
present:

   "Come, my child, and let me see your belly and backside.  But better
yet' why don't you take off all your clothes."

   While O obeyed, she lighted a cigarette.  Sir Stephen had not taken his
eyes off O.  They left her standing there for perhaps five minutes.  There
was no mirror in the room, but O caught a vague reflection of herself in
the black lacquer surface of a screen.

   'Take off your stockings too,' Anne-Marie said suddenly, "you see," she
went on, "you shouldn't wear garters, you'll ruin your thighs." And with
the tip of her finger she pointed to the spot lust above O's knees where O
rolled down her stockings around a wide elastic garter.  There was in fact
a faint mark on her leg.

   "Who told you to do that?'

   Before O had a chance to reply, Sir Stephen said:

   "The boy who gave her to me, you know him, Rene." And he added: "But I'm
sure he'll come around to your opinion."

   "I'm glad to hear it"' said Anne-Marie.  "I'm going to give you some
long, dark stockings, O, and a corset to hold them up.  But it will be a
whalebone corset one that will be snug at the waist."

   When Anne-Marie had rung and a young, blond, silent girl had brought in
some very sheer, black stockings and a tight-fitting corset of black nylon
taffeta, reinforced and sustained by wide, close-set stays which curved in
at the lower belly and above the hips.  O, who was still standing, shifting
her weight from one foot to the other, slipped on the stockings, which came
to the top of her thighs.  The young blonde helped her into the corset,
which had a row of buckles along one of the busks on one side near the
back.

   Like the bodices at Roissy, this one could be laced lip as tightly or
loosely as desired, the laces being at the back.  O fastened her stockings
to the four garter-belt snaps in front and on the sides, then the girl set
about lacing her up as tight as she could.  O felt her waist and belly
being pressed inward by the pressure of the stays, that m front descended
almost to the pubis, which they left free, as they did her hips.  The
corset was shorter behind and left her rear completely free.

   She'll be much improved," Anne-Marie said, speaking to Sir Stephen,
"when her waist is a fraction of its present size.  And what's more, if
you're too pressed for time to have her undress, you'll see that the corset
is no inconvenience.

   Now then, O, step over this way."

   The girl left, O went over to Anne-Marie, who was sitting in a low
chair, a small easy chair upholstered in bright red velvet.  Anne-Marie ran
her hand lightly over her buttocks and then, toppling her over an ottoman
similar to the red velvet chair and ordering her not to move, seized both
her nether lips.

   This is how they lift the fish at the market, O was thinking, by the
gills, and how they pry open the mouths of horses.  She also recalled that
the valet Pierre, during her first evening at Roissy, had done the same to
her after having fastened her in chains.  After all, she was no longer
mistress of her own fate, and that part of her of which she was least in
control was most assuredly that half of her body which could, so to speak:,
be put to use independently of the rest.  Why, each time that she realized
this, was she surprised was not really the right word--once again
persuaded, why was she paralyzed each time by the same feeling of profound
distress, a sentiment which tended to deliver her not so much into the
hands of the person she was with as into the hands of him who had turned
her over to alien hands, a sentiment which drew her closer to Rene when
others were possessing her and which, here, was tending to draw her closer
to whom?  To Rene or to Sir Stephen?  She no longer knew. . ..  But that
was because she did not want to know, for it was clear that she had
belonged to Sir Stephen now for...  how long had it been?..

   Anne-Marie had her stand up and put her clothes back on.

   "You can bring her to me whenever you like," she said to Sir Stephen. 
Ill be at Samois (Samois...  O had expected: Roissy.  But it did not mean
Roissy; then what did it mean?) in two days' time.  That will be fine."'
(What would be fine?) "In ten days, if that suits you," Sir Stephen said,
"at the beginning of July."

   In the car which was driving her back home, Sir Stephen having remained
behind at Anne-Marie's, she remembered the statue she had seen as a child
in the Luxembourg Gardens: a woman whose waist had been similarly
constricted and seemed so slim between.  her full breasts and plump
behind--she was leaning over limpid waters, a spring which, like her, was
carefully sculptured in marble looking at her reflection--so slim and frail
that she had been afraid the marble waist would snap.  But if that was what
Sir Stephen wanted...

   As for Jacqueline, she could handle her easily enough merely by telling
her the corset was one of Rene's whims.  Which brought O back to a train of
thought she had been trying to avoid whenever it occurred to her, one which
surprised her above all not to find more painful: why, since Jacqueline had
moved in with her, had he made an effort not so much to leave her alone
with Jacqueline, which she could understand, but to avoid being alone with
O any more?  July was fast approaching, and he would be going away and
would not be coming to visit her at this Anne-Marie's where Sir Stephen was
sending her; must she therefore resign herself to the fact that the only
times she would see him would be those evenings when he was in the mood to
invite Jacqueline and her, or--and she didn't know which of the two
possibilities upset her most (since between them, at this point there was
something basically false, due to the fact that their relationship was so
circumscribed) on those occasional mornings when, she was at Sir Stephen's
and Norah ushered Rene in after first having announced his arrival?  Sir
Stephen always received him, invariably Rene kissed O, caressed the tips of
her breasts, coordinated his plans with Sir Stephen for the following
day--plans which never included O--and left.  Had he given her to Sir
Stephen so completely that he had ceased to love her?  The thought threw O
into such a state of panic that, mechanically, she got out of Sir Stephen's
car in front of her house, instead of telling the chauffeur to wait, and
after it had pulled away she had to dash off in search of a taxi.  Taxis
are few and far between on the quai de Bethune.  O had to run all the way
to the boulevard Saint-Germain, and still she had to wait.  She was all out
of breath and in a sweat, because her corset made it hard for her to
breathe, when a taxi finally slowed down at the corner of the rue
Cardinal-Lemoine.  She signaled to it, gave the driver the address of
Rene's office, got in with out knowing whether Rene would be there, and, if
he was, whether he would see her; it was the first time she had gone to his
office.

   She was not surprised by the impressive building on a side street just
off the Champs-Elysees, or by the American-style offices, but what did
disconcert her was Rene's attitude, although he did receive her
immediately.

   Not that he was aggressive or full of reproaches.  She would have
preferred reproaches, for he had never given her permission to come and
disturb him at his office, and it was possible that she was creating a
considerable disturbance for him.  He .dismissed his secretary, told her
that he did not want to see anyone, and asked her to hold all calls.  Then
he asked O what was the matter.

   "I was afraid you didn't love' me any longer," O said.  He laughed. 
"All of a sudden, just like that?"

   "Yes, in the car coming back from..

   "Coming back from where?"

   O remained silent.

   Rene laughed again:

   "But I know where you were, silly.  Coming back from Anne-Marie's.  And
in ten days you're going to Samois.  Sir Stephen just talked to me on the
phone."

   Rene was seated in the only comfortable chair in the office, which was
facing the table, and O had buried herself in his arms.

   "They can do whatever they want with me, I don't care," she murmured. 
"But tell me you still love me."

   "Of course I love you, darling," Rene said, "but I want you to obey me,
and I'm afraid you're not doing a very good job of it.  Did you tell
Jacqueline that you belonged to Sir Stephen, did you talk to her about
Roissy?" O assured him that she had not.  Jacqueline acquiesced to her
caresses, but the day she should learn that ...

   Rene stopped her from completing her sentence, lifted her up and laid
her down in the chair where he had just been sitting, and bunched up her
skirt.

   "Ah ha, so you have your corset," lie said.  "It's true that you'll be
much more attractive when you have a smaller waistline."

   Then he took her, and it seemed to O that it had been so long since he
had that, subconsciously, she realized she had begun to doubt whether he
really desired her any longer, and in his act she saw a proof of love.

   "You know," he said afterward, "you're foolish not to talk to
Jacqueline.

   We absolutely need her at Roissy, and the simplest way of getting her
there would be through you.  Besides, when you come back from Anne-Marie's
there won't be any way of concealing your true condition any longer." O
wanted to know why.

   "You'll see," Rene went on.  "You still have five days, and only five
days, because Sir Stephen intends to start whipping you again daily, five
days before he sends you to Anne-Marie's, and there will be no way for you
to hide the marks.  How will you ever explain them to Jacqueline?" O did
not reply.  What Rene did not know was that Jacqueline was completely
egotistical as far as O was concerned, being interested in her solely
because of O's manifest, and passionate, interest in her, and she never
looked at O.  If O were covered with welts from the floggings, all she
would have to do would be to take care not to bathe in Jacqueline's
presence, and to wear a nightgown.  Jacqueline would never notice a thing.
She had never noticed that O did not wear panties, and there was no danger
she would notice anything else: the fact was that O did not interest her.

   "Listen to me," Rene went on, "there's one thing anyway I want you to
tell her, and tell her right away, and that is that I'm in love with her."

   "Is that true?" O said.

   "I want her," Rene said, "and since you can't--or won't--do anything
about it, I'll take charge of the matter myself and do what has to be
done."

   "You'll never get her to agree to go to Roissy," O said.  "I won't?  In
that case," Rene retorted, "we'll force her to." That night, after dark,
when Jacqueline was in bed and O had pulled the' covers back to gaze at her
in the light of the lamp, after having said to her: "Rene's in love with
you, you know"--for she had delivered the message and delivered it without
delay--O, who a month before had been horrified at the idea of seeing this
delicate wisp of a body scored by the lash, these narrow loins quartered,
the pure mouth screaming, and the fair down on her cheeks streaked with
tears, O now repeated to herself Rene's final words, and was happy.

   With Jacqueline gone and not due back until the beginning of August, if
they had finished shooting the film she was making, there was nothing
further to keep O in Paris.  July was around the corner, all the gardens in
Paris were bursting with crimson geraniums, at noon all the shutters in
town were closed, and Rene was complaining that he would have to make a
trip to Scotland.  For a moment O was hoping that he would take her along.
But apart from the fact that he never took her anywhere to see his family,
she knew that he would surrender her to Sir Stephen, if he were to ask for
her.

   Sir Stephen announced that he would come for her the same day that Rene
was flying to London.  She was on vacation.

   "We're going down to Anne-Marie's," he said, "she's expecting you. 
Don't bother packing a suitcase, you won't need anything."

   Their destination was not the apartment near the Observatoire where O
had first met Anne-Marie, but a low-lying two-story house at the end of a
large garden, on the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest.  Since that first
day, O had been wearing the whalebone corset that Anne-Marie had deemed so
essential: each day she had tightened it a little more, until now her waist
was scarcely larger than the circle formed by her ten fingers; Anne-Marie
ought to be pleased.

   When they arrived it was two o'clock in the afternoon, the whole house
was asleep, and the dog barked faintly when they rang the bell: a big,
shaggy, sheepdog that sniffed at O's knees beneath her skirt.  Anne-Marie
was sitting under a copper beech tree on the edge of the lawn which, in one
corner of the garden, faced the windows of her bedroom.  She did not get
up.

   "Here's O," Sir Stephen said.  "You know what has to be done with her.

   "When will she be ready?"

   Anne-Marie glanced at O.  "You mean you haven't told her?  All right,
I'll begin immediately.  You should probably allow ten days after it's
over. I imagine you'll want to put the rings and monogram on yourself? 
Come back in two weeks.  The whole business should be finished two weeks
after that."

   O started to ask a question.

   "Just a minute, O," Anne-Marie said, "go into the front bedroom over
there, get undressed but keep your sandals on, and come back.'

   The room, a large white bedroom with heavy purple Jouy print drapes, was
empty.  O put her bag, her gloves, and her clothes on a small chair near a
closet door.  There was no mirror.  She went back outside and, dazzled by
the bright sunlight, walked slowly back over to the shade of the beech
tree.

   Sir Stephen was still standing in front of Anne-Marie, the dog at his
feet.

   Anne-Marie's black hair, streaked with gray, shone as though she had
used some kind of cream on it, her blue eyes seemed black.  She was dressed
in white, with a patent-leather belt around her waist, and she was wearing
patent-leather sandals which revealed the bright red nail polish on the
toenails of her bare feet, the same color polish she was wearing on her
fingernails.

   "O," she said, "kneel down in front of Sir Stephen." O obliged, her arms
crossed behind her back, the tips of her breasts quivering.  The dog
tensed, as though he were about to spring at her.  "Down, Turk," Anne-Marie
ordered.  Then: "Do you consent, O, to bear the rings and the monogram with
which Sir Stephen desires you to be marked, without knowing how they will
be placed upon you?"

   "I do, "O said.

   "All right then, I'm going to walk Sir Stephen to his car.  Stay here."

   As Anne-Marie got up from her chaise lounge, Sir Stephen bent down and
took O's breasts in his hands.  He kissed her on the mouth and murmured:
"Are you mine, O, are you really mine?" then turned and left her, to follow
Anne-Marie.

   The gate banged shut, Anne-Marie was coming back.  O, her legs folded
beneath her, was sitting on her heels and had her arms on her knees, like
an Egyptian statue.

   There were three other girls living in the house, all of whom had a
bedroom on the second floor.  O was given a small bedroom on the ground
floor, adjoining Anne-Marie's.  Anne-Marie called up to them to come down
into the garden.  Like O, all three of them were naked.  The only persons
in this gynaeceum-which was carefully concealed by the high walls and by
closed shutters over the windows which overlooked a narrow dirt road--the
only persons who wore clothes were Anne-Marie and the three servants: a
cook and two maids, all of whom were older than Anne-Marie, three severe,
dour women in their black alpaca skirts and stiffly starched aprons.

   "Her name is O," said Anne-Marie, who bad sat down again.  "Bring her
over to me so I can get a better look a her.  Two of the girls helped O to
her feet: they were both brunettes, their hair as dark as their fleece
below, and the nipples of their breasts were large and dark, almost purple.
The other girl was a short, plump redhead, and the chalky skin of her bosom
was crisscrossed by a terrifying network of green veins.  The two girls
pushed O till she was right next to Anne-Marie, who pointed to the three
black stripes that showed on the front of her thighs and were repeated on
her buttocks.

   "Who whipped you?" she asked.  "Sir Stephen?"

   "Yes," O said.

   "When?  and with what?"

   "Three days ago, with a riding crop."

   "Starting tomorrow, and for a month thereafter, you will not be whipped.

   But today you will, to mark your arrival, as soon as I've had a chance
to examine you.  Has Sir Stephen ever whipped you on the inside of your
thighs, with you legs spread wide?  No?  It's true, men don't know how to.
Well, we'll soon see Show me your waist.  Yes, it's much better!"

   Anne-Marie pressed O's waist to make it even more wasp like.  Then she
sent the redhead to fetch another corset and had them put it on her.  It
was also made of black nylon, but was so stiffly whaleboned and so narrow
that it looked for all the world like an extremely wide belt.  It had no
garter straps.  One of the girls laced it up as tight as she could, with
Anne-Marie lending her encouragement as she pulled on the laces as hard as
she could.

   "This is dreadful," O said.  "I don't know whether I can bear it."

   "That's the whole point, Anne-Marie said.  "You're much, much lovelier
than you were, but the problem was you didn't lace it tight enough.  You're
going to wear it this way every day.  "But tell me now, how did Sir Stephen
prefer using you?  I need to know."

   She had seized O's womb with her whole hand, and O could not reply.  Two
of the girls were seated on the lawn, the third, one of the brunettes, was
seated on the foot of Anne-Marie's chaise lounge.

   "Turn her around for me, girls, so I can see her back," Anne-Marie said.

   She was turned around and bent over, and the hands of both girls vented
her.

   "Of course," Anne-Marie went on, "there was no need for you to tell me.
You'll have to be marked on the rear.  Stand up.  We're going to put on
your bracelets.  Colette, go get the box, we'll draw lots to see who will
whip you.  Bring the tokens, Colette, then we'll go to the music room."

   Colette was the taller of the two dark-haired girls, the other's name
was Claire; the short redhead was named Yvonne.  O had not noticed till now
that they were all wearing, as at Roissy, a leather collar and leather
bracelets on their wrists.  They were also wearing similar bracelets around
their ankles.

   When Yvonne had chosen some bracelets that fit O and put them on her,
Anne-Marie handed O four tokens and asked her to give one to each of the
girls, without looking at the numbers on them.  O handed out the tokens. 
The three girls each looked at theirs but said nothing, waiting for
AnneMarie to speak.

   "I have number two," Anne-Marie said.  "Who has number one?" Colette had
number one.

   "All right, take O away, she's all yours."

   Colette seized O's arms and joined her hands behind her back; she
fastened the bracelets together and pushed O ahead of her.  On the
threshold of a French door that opened into a small wing which formed an L
with the front of the house, Yvonne, who was leading the way, removed her
sandals.  The light entering through the French door revealed a room the
far end of which formed a kind of raised rotunda; the ceiling, in the shape
of a shallow cupola, was supported by two narrow columns set about six feet
apart.  This dais was about four steps high and, in the area between the
columns, projected further into the room in a gentle arc.  The floor of the
rotunda, like that of the rest of the room, was covered with a red felt
carpet.  The walls were white, the curtains on the windows red, and the
sofas set in a semicircle facing the rotunda were upholstered in the same
red felt material as the carpet on the floor.  In the rectangular portion
of the room there was a fireplace which was wider than it was deep, and
opposite the fireplace a large console-type combination record player and
radio, with shelves of records on both sides.  This was why it was called
the music room, which communicated directly with Anne-Marie's bedroom via a
door near the fireplace.  The identical door on the other "side of the
fireplace opened into a closet.  Aside from the record player and the
sofas, the room had no furniture.

   While Colette had O sit down on the edge of the platform, which in this
center portion between the columns made a vertical drop to the floor--the
steps having been placed to the' left and right of the columns--the two
other girls, after first having closed the Venetian blinds a trifle, shut
the French door.  O was surprised to note that it was a double door, and
AnneMarie, who was laughing, said: "That's so no one can hear you scream.
And the walls are lined with cork.

   Don't worry, no one can hear the slightest thing that goes on in here.
Now lie down."

   She took her by both shoulders and laid her back, then pulled her
slightly forward.  O's hands were clutching the edge of the
platform--Yvonne having attached them to a ring set in the platform--and
her buttocks were thus suspended in mid-air.  Anne-Marie made her raise her
legs toward her chest, then O suddenly felt her legs, still doubled up
above her, being pulled taut in the same direction: straps had been
fastened to her ankle bracelets and thence to the columns on either side,
while she lay thus between them on this raised dais exposed in such a way
that the only part of her which was visible was the double cleft of her
womb and her buttocks violently quartered.

   Anne-Marie caressed the inside of her thighs.

   "It's the most tender spot of the whole body," she said, "be careful not
to harm it.  Not too hard now, Colette."

   Colette was standing over her, astride her at the level of her waist,
and in the bridge formed by her dark legs O could see the tassels of the
whip she was holding in her hand.  As the first blows burned into her
loins, O moaned.  Colette alternated from left to right, paused, then
started again.

   O struggled with all her might, she thought the straps would tear her
limb from limb.  She did not want to grovel, she did not want to beg for
mercy.

   And yet that was precisely what Anne-Marie intended wringing from her
lips.

   "Faster,' she said to Colette, "and harder."

   O braced herself, but it was no use.  A minute later she could bear it
no more, she screamed and burst into tears, while Anne-Marie caressed her
face.

   "Just a second longer," she said, "and it will be over.  Only five more
minutes.  She can scream for five minutes.  It's twenty-five past, Colette.

   Stop when it's half past, when I tell you to."

   But O was screaming:

   "No, no, for God's sake don't!" screaming that she couldn't bear it, no,
she couldn't bear the torture another second.  And yet she endured it to
the bitter end, and after Colette had left the little stage, Anne-Marie
smiled at her.

   "Thank me," she said to O, and O thanked her.

   She knew very well why Anne-Marie had wanted, above all else, to have
her whipped.  That the female of the species was as cruel as, and more
Implacable than, the male, O had never doubted for a minute.  But O
suspected that Anne-Marie was less interested' in making a spectacle of her
power than she was in establishing between O and herself a sense of
complicity.  O had never really understood, but she had finally come to
accept as an undeniable and important verity, this constant and
contradictory jumble of her emotions: she liked the idea of torture, but
when she was being tortured herself she would have betrayed the whole world
to escape it, and yet when it was over she was happy to have gone through
it, happier still if it had been especially cruel and prolonged.  AnneMarie
had been correct in her assumptions both as to O's acquiescence and as to
her revolt, and knew that her pleas for mercy were indeed genuine.  There
was still a third reason for what she had done, which she explained to O.
She was bent on proving to every girl who came into her house, and who was
fated to live in a totally feminine universe, that her condition as a woman
should not be minimized or denigrated by the fact that she was in contact
only with other women, but that, on the contrary, it should be heightened
and intensified.  That was why she required that the girls be constantly
naked; the way in which O was flogged, as well as the position in which she
was bound, had no other purpose.  Today it was O who would remain for the
rest of the afternoon--for three more hours--exposed on the dais, her legs
raised and spread.  Tomorrow it would be Claire, or Colette, or Yvonne,
whom O would contemplate in turn.

   It was a technique much too slow and meticulous (as was the way the whip
was wielded) to be used at Roissy.  But O would see how efficient it was.
Apart from the rings and the letters she would wear when she left, she
would be returned to Sir Stephen--more open, and more profoundly enslaved,
than she had ever before thought was possible.

   The following morning, after breakfast, Anne-Marie told O and Yvonne to
follow her into her bedroom.  From her writing desk she took a green
leather coffer which she set on the bed and proceeded to open.  Both girls
squatted on their heels.

   "Hasn't Yvonne said anything to you about this?" Anne-Marie asked O.  O
shook her head.  What was there for Yvonne to tell her?

   "And I know Sir Stephen didn't either.  No matter.  Anyway, here are the
rings he wants you to wear."

   The rings were of stainless steel, unburnished, the same dull finish as
the gold-plated iron ring.  They were oblong in shape, similar to the links
of a heavy chain, the rounded metal being approximately as thick as the
diameter of an oversized coloring pencil.  Anne-Marie showed O that each
ring was composed of two U-shaped halves, one of which fitted into the
other.

   "This is only the test model," she said, "which can be removed after
it's been inserted.  The permanent model, you see, has a spring inside, and
when you press on it, it locks into the female slot of the other half of
the ring and cannot be removed, except by filing."

   Each ring was as long as two joints of the little finger and wide enough
for the same little finger to slip through it.  To each ring was suspended,
like another ring, Or as though to the supporting loop of an earring, a
ring which was meant to hang parallel to the plane of the ear and form its
extension, a round disk made of the same metal, whose diameter was the same
size as the ring was long.  On one of its faces, a triskelion in gold
inlay; on the opposite face, nothing.

   "On the blank side will be your name, your title, and Sir Stephen's
family and given names," Anne-Marie said, "with, below it, a design
composed of a crossed whip and riding crop.  Yvonne is wearing a disk just
like it on her necklace, but yours will be worn on your loins."

   "But . . .  ;' O ventured.

   "I know," Anne-Marie replied, "That's why I brought Yvonne along.  Show
yours, Yvonne."

   The red-haired girl rose to her feet and lay back on the bed.

   Anne-Marie spread her thighs and showed O that one of the nether lobes
had been neatly pierced, half way down and close to the base.  The iron
ring would just fit into it.

   "In a moment I'll pierce you, O," Anne-Marie said.  "It's nothing
really.

   What takes the longest is placing the clamps so as to be able to suture
the outer and inner layers, attach the epidermis to the inner membrane. 
It's much easier to bear than the whip."

   "You mean to say you won't put me to sleep?" O cried, trembling.  "Of
course not,"

   Anne-Marie replied.  "You'll merely be tied a little more tightly than
you were yesterday.  That's really quite sufficient.  Now come along."

   A week later Anne-Marie removed the clamps and slipped on the test ring.

   It was lighter than it looked, for it was hollow, but still O could feel
its weight.  The hard metal, which was visibly piercing the flesh, looked
like an instrument of torture.  What would it be like when the weight of
the second ring was added to it?  This barbaric instrument would be
immediately and glaringly apparent to the most casual glance.  "Of course
it will," Anne-Marie said, when O pointed this out to her.  "But aren't you
by now fully aware of what Sir Stephen wants?  Anyone, at Roissy or
anywhere else, Sir Stephen or anyone else, even you in front of the mirror,
anyone who lifts your skirts will immediately see his rings on your loins
and, if you turn around, his monogram on your buttocks.  You may possibly
file the rings off one day, but the brand on your backside will never come
off."

   "'I thought it was possible to have tattoos removed," Colette said.  (It
was she who had tattooed, on Yvonne's white skin just above the triangle of
her belly, the initials of Yvonne's master in ornate blue letters, like the
letters you find on embroidery.)

   "O will not be tattooed," replied Anne-Marie.

   O looked at Anne'-Marie.  Colette and Yvonne were stunned, and said
nothing.

   Anne-Marie was fumbling for her words.

   "Go ahead and say it," O said.

   "My poor dear girl, I just couldn't work up the courage to tell you:
you're to be branded.  Sir Stephen sent me the branding irons two days ago.

   "Branded?" Yvonne cried, "with a red-hot branding iron?" From the first
day, O had shared in the life of the house.

   Idleness, absolute and deliberate idleness was the order of the day,
interspersed with dull distractions.  The girls were at liberty to walk in
the garden, to read, draw, play cards, play solitaire.  They could sleep'
in their rooms or sunbathe on the lawn.  Sometimes two of them would chat,
or they would talk together in pairs for hours on end, and sometimes they
would sit at Anne-Marie's feet without uttering a word.  Mealtimes were
always the same, dinner was by candlelight, tea was served in the garden,
and there was something absurd about the matter-of-fact way in which the
two servants served these naked girls seated around a festive table.

   In the evening, Anne-Marie would designate one of them to sleep with
her, sometimes the same one several nights in succession.  She caressed her
chosen partner and was by her caressed, generally toward dawn, and then she
would immediately fall asleep, after having sent her partner back to her
own room.  The purple drapes, only half closed, tinted the dawning day
mauve, and Yvonne used to say that Anne-Marie was as beautiful and haughty
in receiving pleasure as she was unstinting in her demands.  None of them
had ever seen her naked.  She would pull up or open slightly her white
nylon nightgown, but would not take it off.  Neither the pleasure she may
have tasted the night before nor her choice of partner the previous evening
had the least influence on her decision the following afternoon, which was
always determined by a drawing.  At three in the afternoon, beneath the
copper beech where the garden chairs were grouped about a round,
white-marble table, Anne-Marie would bring out the token box.  Each girl
would take a token.

   Whoever drew the lowest number was then taken to the music room and
arranged on the dais as O had been that first day.  She then had to point
to (save for O, who was exempted until her departure) Anne-Marie's right or
left hand, in each of which she was holding a white or black ball.  If she
chose black, she was flogged; white, she was not.  Anne-Marie never
resorted to chicanery, even if chance condemned or spared the same girl
several days in a row.  Thus the torture of little Yvonne, who sobbed and
cried out for her lover, was repeated four days running.  Her thighs, like
her breasts crisscrossed with a green network of veins, spread to reveal a
pink flesh which was pierced by the thick iron ring,' which had finally
been inserted, and the spectacle was all the more striking because Yvonne
was completely shaved.

   "But why?" O wanted to know, and why the ring if you are already wearing
a disk on your collar?"

   "He says I'm more naked when I'm shaved, The ring, I think the ring is
to fasten me with."

   Yvonne's green eyes and her tiny triangular face reminded O of
Jacqueline every time she looked at her.  What if Jacqueline were to go to
Roissy?  Sooner or later, Jacqueline would end up here, would here be
strapped on her back on this platform.

   "I won't," O would say, "I don't want to and I won't lift a finger to
get her there.  As it is, I've already said too much.  Jacqueline's not the
sort to be flogged and marked."

   But how admirably suited to blows and irons was little Yvonne, how
lovely it was to hear her moans and sighs, how lovely too to witness her
body soaked with perspiration, and what a pleasure to wrest the moans and
the sweat from her.  For on two occasions Anne-Marie had handed O the
thonged whip--both times the victim had been Yvonne--and told her to use
it. The first time for the first minute, she had hesitated, and at Yvonne's
first scream O had recoiled and cringed, but as soon as she had started in
again and Yvonne's cries had echoed anew, she had been overwhelmed with a
terrible feeling of pleasure, a feeling so intense that she had caught
herself laughing in spite of herself, and she had found it almost
impossible to restrain herself from striking Yvonne as hard as she could.
Afterward she had remained next to Yvonne throughout the entire period of
time she was kept tied up, embracing her from time to time.  In some ways,
she probably resembled Yvonne.  At least one was led to suspect as much by
the way Anne-Marie felt about them both.  Was it O's silence, her meekness
that endeared her to Anne-Marie?  Scarcely had O's wounds healed than
Anne-Marie remarked: "How I regret not to be able to whip you! . ..  When
you come back...  But let's say no more about it.  In any event, I'm going
to open you every day."

   And, daily, when the girl who was in the music room had been untied, O
would replace her until the bell rang for dinner.  And Anne-Marie was
right: it was true that during those two hours all she could think of was
the fact that she was opened, and of the ring, hanging heavily from her
(after one had been placed there) which, after they had inserted the second
ring, weighed even more.  She could think of nothing save her enslaved
condition, and of the marks that went with it.

   One evening Claire had come in with Colette from the garden, come over
to O and examined both sides of the rings.

   "when you went to Roissy," she said, "was it Anne-Marie who brought you
there?"

   "No," O said.

   "It was Anne-Marie who brought me, two years ago.  I'm going back there
the day after tomorrow."

   "But don't you belong to anyone?" O said.

   "Claire belongs to me," said Anne-Marie, appearing from nowhere.  "Your
master's arriving tomorrow, O.  Tonight you'll sleep with me." The short
summer night waxed slowly brighter until, toward four o'clock, daylight
drowned the last stars.  O, who was sleeping with her legs together, was
awakened by Anne-Marie's hands probing between her thighs.  But all
Anne-Marie wanted was to awaken O, to have O caress her.  Her eyes were
shining in the half light, and her black hair, with the streaks of gray
interspersed, was pushed lip behind her on the pillow: only slightly curly,
and cut quite short, it made her look like some mighty nobleman in exile,
like some brave libertine.  With her lips, O brushed the hard tips of her
breasts, and her hand ran lightly over the valley of her belly.  Anne-Marie
was quick to yield--but not to O.

   The pleasure to which she opened her eyes wide, staring at the growing
daylight, was an anonymous, impersonal pleasure of which O was merely the
instrument.  It made no difference whatever to Anne-Marie that O admired
her face, smooth and glowing with renewed youth, her lovely panting lips,
nor did she care whether O heard her moan when her lips and teeth seized
the crest of flesh hidden in the furrow of her belly.  She merely seized O
by the hair to press her more closely to her, and only let her go in order
to say to her: "Again, do it again."

   O had loved Jacqueline in the same way, had held her completely
abandoned in her arms.  She had possessed her; or at least so she thought.
But the similarity of gestures meant nothing.  O did not possess AnneMarie.
No one possessed.  Anne-Marie.  Anne-Marie demanded caresses without
worrying about what the person providing them might feel, and she
surrendered herself with an arrogant liberty.  Yet she was all kindness and
gentleness with O, kissed her on the mouth and kissed her breasts, and held
her close against her for an hour before sending her back to her own room.
She had removed her irons.

   "These are your final hours here," she said, "you can sleep without the
irons.  The ones we'll put on you in a little while you'll never be able to
take off.

   She had run her hand softly, and at great length, over O's rear, then
had taken her into the room where she,' Anne-Marie, dressed, the only room
in the house where there was a three-sided mirror.  She had opened the
mirror so that O could see herself.

   "This is the last time you'll see yourself intact," she said.  "Here, on
this smooth, rounded area is where Sir Stephen's Initials will be branded,
on either side of the cleft in your behind.  The day before you leave I'll
bring you back here for another look at yourself.  You won't recognize
yourself.  But Sir Stephen is right.  Now go and get some sleep, O.', But O
was too worried and upset to sleep, and when at ten the next morning Yvonne
came to fetch her, O was trembling so that she had to help her bathe,
arrange her hair, and put on her lipstick.  She had heard the garden gate
open; Sir Stephen was there.

   "Come along now, O," Yvonne said, "he's waiting for you." The sun was
already high in the sky, not a breath of air was stirring in the leaves of
the beech tree, which looked as though it were made out of copper.  The
dog, overcome by the heat, was lying at the foot of the tree, and since the
sun had not yet disappeared behind the main mass of foliage, its rays shot
through.  the end of the only branch which, at this hour, cast a shadow on
the table: the marble top was resplendent with bright' warm spots of light.

   Sir Stephen was standing, motionless, beside the table, Anne-Marie
seated beside him.

   "Here she is," said Anne-Marie, when Yvonne had brought O before them,
"the rings can be put on whenever you like, she's been pierced." Without
replying, Sir Stephen took O in his arms, kissed her on the mouth and,
lifting her completely off her feet, lay her down on the table and bent
over her.  Then he kissed her again, caressed her eyebrows and her hair
and, straightening up, said to Anne-Marie:

   "Right now, if it's all right with you."

   Anne-Marie took the leather coffer which she had brought Out with her
and set down on a chair, and handed Sir Stephen the rings, which were
unhooked, and on which were inscribed the names of O and Sir Stephen.

   "Any time," Sir Stephen said.

   Yvonne lifted O's knees, and O felt the cold metal as Anne-Marie slipped
it into place.  As she was slipping the second half of the ring into the
first, she was careful to see that the side inlaid with gold was against
her thigh, and the side which bore the inscription facing inward.  But the
spring was so tight that the prongs would not go in all the way.  They had
to send Yvonne to fetch the hammer.  Then they made O sit up and lean over,
with her legs spread, on the edge of the marble slab, which served as an
anvil first for one then the other of the two links of the chain, while
they hit the other end with a hammer to drive the prongs home.  Sir Stephen
looked on in silence.  When it was over he thanked Anne-Marie and helped O
to her feet.

   It was then she realized that these new irons were much heavier than the
ones she had been wearing temporarily for the past few days.  But these
were permanent.

   "And now your monogram, right?" Anne-Marie said to Sir Stephen.  Sir
Stephen nodded assent, and held O by the waist, for she was stumbling and
looked as though she might fall.  She was not wearing her black corset, but
it had so molded her into the desired shape that she looked as though she
might break, so slim was her waistline now.  And, as a result, her hips and
breasts seemed fuller.

   In the music room, into which Sir Stephen carried rather than led O,
Colette and Claire were seated at the foot of the stage.  When the others
came m, they both got to their feet.  On the stage was a big, round
singleburner stove.  Anne-Marie took the straps from the closet and had
them tie O tightly around the waist and knees, her belly hard against one
of the columns.  They also bound her hands and feet.  Consumed by fear and
terror, O felt one of Anne-Marie's hands on her buttocks, indicating the
exact spot for the irons, she heard the hiss of a flame and, in total
silence, heard the window being closed.  She could have turned her head and
looked, but she did not have the strength to.  One single, frightful' stab
of pain coursed through her, made her go rigid in her bonds and wrenched a
scream from her lips, and she never knew who it was who had, with both
branding irons at once, seared the flesh of her buttocks, nor whose voice
had counted slowly up to five, nor whose hand had given the signal to
withdraw the irons.

   When they unfastened her, she collapsed into Anne-Marie's arms and had
time, before everything turned black around her and she completely lost
consciousness, to catch a glimpse, between two waves of darkness, of Sir
Stephen's ghastly pale face.

   Ten days before the end of July, Sir Stephen drove O back to Paris.  The
irons attached to the left lobe of her belly's cleft, proclaiming in bold
letters that she was Sir Stephen's personal property, came about a third of
the way down her thigh and, at every step, swung back and forth between her
legs like the clapper of a bell, the inscribed disk being heavier and
longer than the ring to which it was attached.  The marks made by the
branding iron, about three inches in height and half that in width, had
been burned into the flesh as though by a gouging tool, and were almost
half an inch deep: the lightest stroke of the finger revealed them.  From
these irons and these marks, O derived a feeling of inordinate pride.  Had
Jacqueline been there, instead of trying to conceal from her the fact that
she bore them, as she had tried to hide the traces of the welts raised by
the riding crop which Sir Stephen had wielded during those last days before
her departure, she would have gone running in search of Jacqueline, to show
them to her.  But Jacqueline was not due back for another week.  Rene
wasn't there.

   During that week, O, at Sir Stephen's behest, had several summer dresses
made, and a number of evening gowns of a very light material.  He allowed
her only two models, but let her order variations on both: one with a
zipper all the way down the front (O already had several like it), the
other a full skirt, easy to lift, always with a corselet above, which came
up to below the breasts and was worn with a high-necked bolero.  All one
had to do was remove the bolero and the shoulders and breasts were bare, or
simply to open it if one desired to see the breasts.  Bathing snits, of
course, were out of the question; the nether irons would hang below the
suit.  Sir Stephen had told her that this summer she would have to swim
naked whenever she went swimming.  Beach slacks were also out.  However,
Anne-Marie, who was responsible for the two basic models of dresses,
knowing where Sir Stephen's preference lay in using O, had proposed a type
of slacks which would be supported in front by the blouse and, on both
sides, have long zippers, thus allowing the back flap to be lowered without
taking off the slacks.  But Sir Stephen refused.  It was true that he used
O, when he did not have recourse to her mouth, almost invariably as he
would have a boy.  But O had had ample opportunity to notice that when she
was near him, even when he did not particularly desire her, he loved to
take hold of her womb, mechanically as it were, take hold of and tug at her
fleece with his hand, to pry her open and burrow at length within.  The
pleasure O derived from holding Jacqueline in much the same way, moist and
burning between her locked fingers, was ample evidence and a guarantee of
Sir Stephen's pleasure.  She understood why he did not want any extraneous
obstacles set in.  the path of that pleasure.

   Hatless, wearing practically no makeup, her hair completely free, O
looked like a well-brought-up little girl, dressed as she was in her
twilled stripe or polka dot, navy blue-and-white or gray-and-white pleated
sun skirts and the fitted bolero buttoned at the neck, or in her more
conservative dresses of black nylon.  Everywhere Sir Stephen escorted her
she was taken for his daughter, or his niece, and this mistake was abetted
by the fact that he, in addressing her, employed the tu form, whereas she
employed the vous.  Alone together in Paris, strolling through the streets
to window shop, or walking along the quays, where the paving stones were
dusty because the weather had been so dry, they evinced no surprise at
seeing the passers-by smile at them, the way people smile at people who are
happy.

   Once in a while Sir Stephen would push her into the recess of a
portecochere, or beneath the archway of a building, which was always
slightly dark, and from which there rose the musty odor of ancient cellars,
and he would kiss her and tell her he loved her.  O would hook her heels
over the sill of the porte-cochere out of which the regular pedestrian door
bad been cut.  They caught a glimpse of a courtyard in the rear, with lines
of laundry drying in the windows.  Leaning on one of the balconies, a blond
girl would be staring fixedly at them.  A cat would slip between their
legs. Thus did they stroll through the Gobelins district, by Saint-Marcel,
along the rue Mouffetard, to the area known as the Temple, and to the
Bastille.  Once Sir Stephen suddenly steered O into a wretched
brothel--like hotel, where the desk clerk first wanted them to fill out the
forms, but then said not to bother if it was only for an hour.  The
wallpaper in the room was blue, with enormous golden peonies, the window
looked out onto a pit whence rose the odor of garbage cans.  However weak
the light bulb at the head of the bed, you could still see streaks of face
powder and forgotten hairpins on the mantelpiece.  On the ceiling above the
bed was a large mirror.  Once, but only once, Sir Stephen invited O to
lunch with two of his compatriots who were passing through Paris.  He came
for her an hour before she was ready, and instead of having her driven to
his place, he came to the quai de Bethune.

   O had finished bathing, but she had not done her hair or put on her
makeup, and was not dressed.  To her surprise, she saw that Sir Stephen was
carrying a golf bag, though she saw no clubs in it.  But she soon got over
her surprise: Sir Stephen told her to open the bag.  Inside were several
leather riding crops, two fairly thick ones of red leather, two that were
long and thin of black leather, a scourge with long lashes of green
leather, each of which was folded back at the end to form a loop, a dog's
whip made of a thick, single lash whose handle was of braided leather and,
last but not least, leather bracelets of the sort used at Roissy, plus some
rope.  O laid them out side by side on the unmade bed, No matter how
accustomed she became to seeing them, no matter what resolutions she made
about them, she could not keep from trembling.  Sir Stephen took her in his
arms.  "Which do you prefer, O?" he asked her.

   But she could hardly speak, and already could feel the sweat running
down her arms.

   "Which do you prefer?" he repeated.  "All right," he said, confronted by
her silence, "first you're going to help me."

   He asked her for some nails, and having found a way to arrange them in a
decorative manner, whips and riding crops crossed, he showed O a panel of
wainscoting between her mirror and the fireplace, opposite her bed, which
would be ideal for them.  He hammered some nails into the wood.  There were
rings on the ends of the handles of the whips and riding crops, by which
they could be suspended from the nails, a system which allowed each whip to
be easily taken down and returned to its place on the wall.  Thus, together
with the bracelets and the rope, O would have, opposite her bed, the
complete array of her instruments of torture.  It was a handsome panoply,
as harmonious as the wheel and spikes in the paintings of Saint Catherine
the Martyr, as the nails and hammer, the crown of thorns, the spear and
scourges portrayed in the paintings of the Crucifixion.

   When Jacqueline came back.  But all this involved Jacqueline, involved
her deeply.  She would have to reply to Sir Stephen's question: O could
not. He chose the dog whip himself.

   In a tiny private dining room of the La Perouse restaurant, along the
quays of the Left Bank, a room on the third floor whose dark walls were
brightened by Watteau-like figures in pastel colors who resembled actors of
the puppet theater, O was ensconced alone on the sofa, with one of Sir
Stephen's friends in an armchair to her right, another to her left, and Sir
Stephen across from her.  She remembered already having seen one of the men
at Roissy, but she could not recall having been taken by him.  The other
was a tall, red-haired boy with gray eyes, who could not have been more
than twenty-five.  In two words, Sir Stephen told them why he had invited
O, and what she was.  Listening to him, O was once again astonished at the
coarseness of his language.  But then, how did she expect to be referred
to, if not as a whore, a girl who, in the presence of three men (not to
mention the restaurant waiters who kept trooping in and out, since luncheon
was still being served) would open her bodice to bare her breasts, the tips
of which had been reddened with lipstick, as they could see, as they could
also see from the purple furrows across her milk-white skin that she had
been flogged?  The meal went on for a long time, and the two Englishmen
drank a great deal.  Over coffee, when the liqueurs had been served, Sir
Stephen pushed the table back against the opposite wall and, after having
lifted her skirt to show his friends how O was branded and in irons, left
her to them.  The man she had met at Roissy wasted no time with her:
without leaving his armchair, without even touching her with his
fingertips, he ordered her to kneel down in front of him, take him and
caress his sex until he discharged in her mouth.  After which, he made her
straighten out his clothing, and then he left.

   But the red-haired lad, who had been completely overwhelmed by O's
submissiveness and meek surrender, by her irons and the welts which he had
glimpsed on her body, took her by the hand instead of throwing himself upon
her as she had expected, and descended the stairs, paying not the slightest
heed to the sly smiles of the waiters and, after hailing a taxi, took her
back to his hotel room.  He did not let her go till nightfall, after having
frantically plowed her fore and aft--both of which he bruised and belabored
unmercifully, he being of an uncommon size and rigidity and, what is more,
being totally intoxicated by the sudden freedom granted him to penetrate a
woman doubly and be embraced by her in the way he had seen her ordered to a
short while before (something he had never before dared ask of anyone).

   The' following day, when O arrived at Sir Stephen's at two o'clock in
answer to his summons, she found him looking older and his face careworn.

   "Eric has fallen head over heels in love with you, O," he told her.

   "This morning he called on me and begged me to grant you your freedom.
He told me he wants to marry you.  He wants to save you.  You see how I
treat you if you're mine, O, and if you are mine you have no right to
refuse my commands; but you also know that you are always free to choose
not to be mine.  I told him so.  He's coming back here at three."

   O burst out laughing.  "Isn't it a little late?" she said.  "You're both
quite mad.  If Eric had not come by this morning, what would you have done
with me this afternoon?  We would have gone for a walk, nothing more?  Then
let's go for a walk.  Or perhaps you would not have summoned me this
afternoon?  In that case I'll leave..."

   "No," Sir Stephen broke in, "I would have called you, but not to go for
a walk.  I wanted..."

   "Go on, say it."

   "Come, it will be simpler to show you.

   He got up and opened a door in the wall opposite the fireplace, a door
identical to the one into his office.

   O had always thought that the door led into a closet which was no longer
used.  She saw a tiny bedroom, newly painted, and hung with dark red silk.

   Half of the room was occupied by a rounded stage flanked by two columns,
identical to the stage in the music room at Samois.

   "The walls and ceiling are lined with cork, are they not?" O said.  "And
the door is padded, and you've had a double window installed?"

   Sir Stephen nodded.

   "But since when has all this been done?" O said.

   "Since you've been back."

   "Then why?..."

   "Why did I wait until today?  Because I first wanted to hand you over to
other men.  Now I shall punish you for it.  I've never punished you, O.'

   "But I belong to you," O said.  "Punish me.  When Eric comes..." An hour
later, when he was shown a grotesquely bound and spread-eagled O strapped
to the two columns, the boy blanched, mumbled something, and disappeared. O
thought she would never see him again.  She ran into him again at Roissy,
at the end of September, and he had her consigned to him for three days in
a row, during which he savagely abused and mistreated her.

   IV The Owl

   What O failed completely to understand now was why she had ever been
hesitant to speak to Jacqueline about what Rene rightly called her true
condition.  Anne-Marie had warned her that she would be changed when she
left Samois, but O had never imagined the change would be so great.  With
Jacqueline back, more lovely and radiant than ever, it seemed natural to
her to be no more reticent about revealing herself when she bathed or
dressed than she was when she was alone.  And yet Jacqueline was so
disinterested in others, in anything that did not pertain directly to
herself, that it was not until the second day after Jacqueline arrived back
and by chance came into the bathroom Just as O was stepping out of the tub,
that jingled her irons against the porcelain to draw her attention to the
odd noise.

   Jacqueline turned her head, and saw both the disk hanging between her
legs and the black Stripes crisscrossing her thighs and breasts.

   "What in the world's the matter?" she said.

   "It's Sir Stephen," O replied.  And she added, as though it were
something to be taken completely for granted: "Rene gave me to him, and
he's had me pierced with his rings.  Look." And as she dried herself with
the bath towel she came over to Jacqueline, who was so staggered she had
slumped onto the lacquered bathroom stool, close enough so that Jacqueline
could take the disk in her hand and read the inscription; then, slipping
down her bathrobe she turned around and pointed to the initials S and H
engraved in her buttocks and said:

   "He also had me branded with his monogram.  As for the rest, that's
where I was flogged with a riding crop.  He generally whips me himself, but
he also has a black maid whip me.

   Dumbfounded, Jacqueline gazed at O.  O burst out laughing and made as
though to kiss her.  Terror-stricken, Jacqueline pushed her away and fled
into her own room.  O leisurely finished drying herself, put on her
perfume, and combed her hair.  She put on her corset, her stockings, her
mules, and when she opened the bathroom door she encountered Jacqueline's
gaze in the mirror, before which she was combing her hair, without having
the vaguest notion what she was doing.

   "Lace up my corset, will you?" she said.  "You really do look
astonished."

   Rene's in love with you, didn't he say anything to you about it?"

   "I don't understand,"

   Jacqueline said.  And she lost no time revealing what surprised her the
most.  "You look as though you were proud of it, I don't understand."

   "You will, after Rene takes you to Roissy.  By the way, have you already
slept with him?"

   Jacqueline's face turned a bright crimson, and she was shaking her head
in denial with such little conviction that once again O burst out laughing.

   "You're lying, darling, don't be an ass.  You have every right in the
world to sleep with him.  And I might add that that's no reason to reject
me.

   Come, let me caress you and I'll tell you all about Roissy."

   Had Jacqueline been afraid that O's jealousy would explode in her face
and then yield to her out of relief when it did not, or was it curiosity,
did she want to hear the promised explanations, or was it merely because
she loved the patience, the slowness, the passion of O's caresses?  In any
event, yield she did.

   "Tell me about it," she later said to O.

   "All right," O said.  "But first kiss the tips of my breasts.  It's time
you got used to it, if you're ever to be of any use to Rene."

   Jacqueline did as she was bade, so well in fact that she wrested a moan
from O.

   "Tell me about it," she said.

   O's tale, however faithful and clear it may have been, and
notwithstanding the material proof she herself constituted, seemed
completely mad to Jacqueline.

   "You mean you're going back in September?" she said.  "After we've come
back from the Midi," O said.  "I'll take you, or Rene will."

   "To see what it's like, I wouldn't mind that," Jacqueline went on, "but
only to see what it's like."

   "I'm sure that can be arranged," said O, though she was convinced of the
contrary.  But, she kept telling herself, if she could only persuade
Jacqueline to enter the gates at Roissy, Sir Stephen would be grateful to
her--and once she was in, there would be enough valets, chains, and whips
to teach Jacqueline to obey.

   She already knew that the summer house that Sir Stephen had rented near
Cannes on the Riviera, where she was scheduled to spend the month of August
with Rene, Jacqueline, and him (and with Jacqueline's younger sister, whom
Jacqueline had asked if she could bring along, not because she cared
especially to have her but because her mother had been hounding her to
obtain O's permission), she knew that her room, to which she was certain
she could entice Jacqueline, who would be unable to refuse when Rene was
away, was separated from Sir Stephen's bedroom by a wall that looked as
though it was full but actually was not; the wall was decorated with a
trompe d'oeil latticework which enabled Sir Stephen to raise a blind on his
side and thus to see and hear as well as if he had been standing beside the
bed.

   Jacqueline would be surrendered to Sir Stephen's gaze while O was
caressing her, and by the time she found out it would be too late.  O was
pleased to think that she would deliver Jacqueline by an act of betrayal,
because she had felt insulted at seeing Jacqueline's contempt for her
condition as a flogged and branded slave, a condition of which O herself
was proud.

   O had never been to the south of France before.  The clear blue sky, the
almost mirror-like sea, the motionless pines beneath the burning sun:
everything seemed mineral and hostile to her.  "No real trees," she
remarked sadly to herself as she gazed at the fragrant thickets full of
shrubs and bushes, where all the stones, and even the lichens, were warm to
the touch.  "The sea doesn't smell like the sea," she thought.  She blamed
the sea for washing up nothing more than an occasional piece of wretched
seaweed which looked like dung, she blamed it for being too blue and for
always lapping at the same bit of shore.  But in the garden of Sir
Stephen's villa, which was an old farmhouse that had been restored, they
were far from the sea.  To left and right, high walls protected them from
the neighbors; the servants' wing faced the entrance court' yard, while the
side of the house overlooking the garden faced the east; O's bedroom was on
this side, and opened directly onto a second-story terrace.  The tops of
the tall black cypress trees were level with the overlapping hollow tiles
which served as a parapet for the terrace, which was protected from the
noon sun by a reed latticework.  The floor of the terrace was of red tile,
the same as the tiles in her bedroom.  Aside from the wall which separated
O's bedroom from Sir Stephen's--and this was the wall of a large alcove
bounded by an archway and separated from the rest of the room by a kind of
railing similar to the railings of stairways, with banisters of hand-carved
wood- all the other walls were whitewashed.  The thick white rug on the
tile floor was made of cotton, the curtains were of yellow-and-white linen.
There were two armchairs up-holstered in the same material, and some
triplelayered Oriental cushions.  The only furniture was a heavy and very
handsome Regency bureau made of walnut' and a very long, narrow peasant
table in light-colored wood which was waxed till it shone like a mirror.  O
hung her clothes in a closet.  For a dressing table, she used the top of
the bureau.

   Jacqueline's little sister Natalie had been given a room near O's, and
in the morning when she knew that O was taking a sunbath on the terrace,
she came out and lay down beside her.  She had snow-white skin, was a shade
plump, but her features were none the less delicate and, like her sister,
she had slanting eyes, but hers were black and shining, which made her look
Chinese.

   Her black hair was cut in straight bangs across her forehead, just above
her eyebrows, and in the back was almost cut straight' at the nape of the
neck.

   She had firm, tremulous little breasts, and her adolescent hips were
only beginning to fill out, She too had chanced upon O, and taken her quite
by surprise, one day when she had dashed out onto the terrace expecting to
find her sister but found O instead, lying there alone on her stomach on
the Oriental pillows.  ut what had shocked Jacqueline filled Natalie with
envy and desire.  She asked her sister about it.  Jacqueline's replies,
which were intended to shock and revolt young Natalie by repeating to her
what O had related, in no wise altered Natalie's feelings.  If anything, it
accomplished the contrary.  She had fallen in love with O.  For more than a
week she managed to keep it to herself, then late one Sunday afternoon she
managed to be alone with O.

   The weather had been cooler than normal.  Rene, who had' spent part of
the morning swimming, was asleep on the sofa of a cool room on the ground
floor.

   Nettled at seeing that he should prefer to take a nap, Jacqueline had
gone upstairs and joined O in her alcove.  The sea and sun had already made
her more golden than before: her hair, her eyebrows, her eyelashes, her
nether fleece, her armpits, all seemed to be powdered with silver, and
since she was not wearing any makeup, her mouth was the same color pink as
the pink flesh between her thighs.

   To make sure that Sir Stephen could see Jacqueline in detail--and O
thought to herself that if she were Jacqueline she would have guessed, or
noticed, his invisible presence--O took pains to pull back her legs and
keep them spread in the light of the bedside lamp which she had turned on.
The shutters were closed, the room almost dark, despite the thin rays of
light that spilled in where the wood was not snug.  For more than an hour
Jacqueline moaned to O's caresses, and finally, her breasts aroused, her
arms thrown back behind her head while her hands circled the wooden bars of
the headboard of O's Italian-style bed, she began to cry out when O,
parting the lobes hemmed with pale hair, slowly began to bite the crest of
flesh at the point between her thighs where the dainty, supple lips joined.

   O felt her rigid and burning beneath her tongue, and wrested cry after
cry from her lips, with no respite, until she suddenly relaxed, the springs
broken, and she lay there moist with pleasure.  Then O sent her back to her
room, where she fell asleep.

   Jacqueline was awake and ready, though, when Rene came for her at five
o'clock to go sailing, with Natalie, in a small sailboat, as they had grown
accustomed to doing.  A slight wind usually came up at the end of the
afternoon.

   "Where's Natalie?" Rene said.

   Natalie was not in her room, nor was she anywhere in the house.  They
went out to the garden and called her.  Rene went as far as the thicket of
scrub oak at the end of the garden; no one answered.

   "Maybe she's already down at the inlet," Rene said, "or in the boat."

   They left without calling her any more.

   It was at that point that O, who was lying on the Oriental pillows on
her terrace, glanced through the tile banisters and saw Natalie running
toward the house.  She got up, put on her dressing gown--it was still so
warm, even this late in the afternoon, that she was naked--and was tying
her belt when Natalie erupted into the room like one of the Furies and
threw herself at O.

   "She's gone,"' she shouted, "she's finally gone.  I heard her, O, I
heard you both, I was listening behind the door.  You kiss her, you caress
her.

   Why don't you caress me, why don't you kiss me?  Is it because I'm dark,
because I'm not pretty?  She doesn't love you, O, but I do, I love you!"
And she broke down and began to sob.

   "All right, fine," O said to herself.

   She eased the child into an armchair, took a large handkerchief from her
bureau (it was one of Sir Stephen's), and when Natalie's sobs had subsided
a little, wiped her tears away.  Natalie begged her forgiveness, kissing
O's hands.

   "Even if you don't want to kiss me, O, keep me with you.  Keep me with
you always.  If you had a dog, you'd keep him and take care of him.  And
even if you don't want to kiss me but would enjoy beating me, you can beat
me.  But don't send me away.

   "Keep still, Natalie, you don't know what you're saying," O murmured,
almost in a whisper.

   The child, slipping down and hugging O's knees, also replied in a
nearwhisper: "Oh, yes I do.  I saw you the other morning on the terrace.  I
saw the initials, I saw the long black-and-blue marks.  And Jacqueline has
told me...

   "Told you what?"

   "Where you've been, O, and what they did to you there."

   "Did she talk to you about Roissy?"

   "She also told me that you had been, that you are...

   "That I was what?"

   "That you wear iron rings."

   "That's right," O said, "and what else?"

   "That Sir Stephen whips you every day."

   "That's correct, O repeated, "and he'll be here any second.  So run
along, Natalie."

   Natalie, without shifting position, raised her head to O, and O's eyes
encountered her adoring gaze.

   "Teach me, O, please teach me," she started in again, "I want to be like
you.  I'll do anything you tell me.  Promise me you'll take me with you
when you go back to that place Jacqueline told me about."

   "You're too young," O said.

   "No, I'm not too young, I'm fifteen going on sixteen," she cried out
angrily.  "I'm not too young.  Ask Sir Stephen," she said, for he had lust
entered the room.

   Natalie was granted permission to remain with O, and extracted the
promise that she would be taken to Roissy.  But Sir Stephen forbade O to
teach her the least caress, not even a kiss on the lips and also gave
strict instructions that O was not to allow Natalie to kiss her.  He had
every intention of having her reach Roissy completely untouched by hands or
lips.

   By way of compensation, what he did demand, since Natalie was loath to
leave O, was that she not leave her for a single moment, that she witness O
caressing both Jacqueline and himself, that she be present when O yielded
to him and when he whipped her, or when she was flogged by old Norah.  The
kisses with which O smothered her sister, O's mouth glued to hers, made
Natalie quiver with jealousy and hate.  But, cowering on the carpet in the
alcove, at the foot of O's bed, like little Dinarzade at the foot of
Scheherazade's bed, she watched each time that O, tied to the wooden
balustrade, writhed and squirmed beneath the riding crop, saw O on her
knees humbly receiving Sir Stephen's massive, upright sex in her mouth, saw
her, prostrate, spread her own buttocks with both hands to offer him the
after passage--she witnessed all these things with no other feelings but
those of admiration, envy, and impatience.

   It was about this same time that a change took place in Jacqueline:
perhaps O had counted too heavily both on Jacqueline's indifference and her
sensuality, perhaps Jacqueline herself naively felt that surrendering
herself to O was dangerous for her relations with Rene, but whatever the
reason, she suddenly ceased coming to O.  At the same time, she seemed to
be keeping herself aloof from Rene, with whom, however, she was spending
almost every day and every night.  She had never acted as though she were
in love with him.  She studied him coldly, and when she smiled at him, her
eyes remained cold.  Even assuming that she was as completely abandoned
with him as she was with O, which was quite likely, O could not help
thinking that this surrender was superficial.  Whereas Rene was head over
heels in love with her, paralyzed by a love such as he had never known
before, a worrisome, uncertain love, one he was far from sure was requited,
a love that acts not, for fear of offending.  He lived, he slept in the
same house as Sir Stephen, the same house as O, he lunched, he dined, he
went on walks with Sir Stephen, with O, he conversed with them both: he
didn't see them, he didn't hear what they said.  He saw, he heard, he
talked through them, beyond them, and, as in a dream when one tries to
catch a departing train or clings desperately to the parapet of a
collapsing bridge, he was forever trying to understand the raison d'etre,
the truth which must have been lurking somewhere inside Jacqueline, under
that golden skin, like the mechanism inside a crying doll.

   "Well," thought O, "the day I was so afraid would arrive is here, the
day when I'd merely be a shadow in Rene's past.  And I'm not even sad; the
only thing I feel for him is pity, and even knowing he doesn't desire me
any longer, I can see him every day without any trace of bitterness,
without the least regret, without even feeling hurt.  And yet only a few
weeks ago I dashed all the way across town to his office, to beg him to
tell me he still loved me.  Was that all my love was, all it meant?  So
light, so easily gone and forgotten?  Is solace that simple?  And solace is
not even the right word: I'm happy.  Do you mean to say it was enough for
him to have given me to Sir Stephen for me to be detached from him, for me
to find a new love so easily in the arms of another?"

   But then, what was Rene compared to Sir Stephen?  Ropes of straw,
anchors of cork, paper chains: these were the real symbols of the bonds
with which he had held her, and which he had been so quick to sever.  But
what a delight and comfort, this iron ring which pierces the flesh and
weighs one down forever, this mark eternal, how peaceful and reassuring the
hand of a master who lays you on a bed of rock, the love of a master who
knows how to take what he loves ruthlessly, without pity.  And O said to
herself that, in the final analysis, with Rene she had been an apprentice
to love, she had loved him only to learn how to give herself, enslaved and
surfeited, to Sir Stephen.  But to see Rene, who had been so free with her-
and she had loved his free ways--walking as though he were hobbled, like
someone whose legs were ensnarled in the water and reeds of a pond whose
surface seems calm but which, deeper down, swirls with subterranean
currents, to see him thus, filled O with hate for Jacqueline.  Did Rene
dimly perceive her feelings?  Did O carelessly reveal how she felt?  In any
case, O committed an error.

   One afternoon she and Jacqueline had gone to Cannes together to the
hairdresser, alone, then to the Reserve Cafe for an ice cream on the
terrace.

   Jacqueline was superb in her tight-fitting black slacks and sheer black
sweater, eclipsing even the brilliance of the children around her she was
so bronzed and sleek, so hard and bright in the burning sun, so insolent
and inaccessible.  She told O she had made an appointment there with the
director whose picture she had been playing in in Paris, to arrange for
taking some exteriors, probably in the mountains above Saint-Paul-deVence.
And there he was, forthright and determined.  He didn't need to open his
mouth, it was obvious he was in love with Jacqueline.  All one had to do
was see the way he looked at her.  What was so surprising about that? 
Nothing; but what was surprising was Jacqueline.  Half reclining in one of
those adjustable beach chairs, Jacqueline listened to him as he talked of
dates to be set, appointments to be made, of the problems of raising enough
money to finish the half-completed picture.  He used the tu form in
addressing Jacqueline, who replied with a mere nod or shake of her head,
keeping her eyes half-closed.  O was seated across from Jacqueline, with
him between them.  It took no great act of perception to notice that
Jacqueline, whose eyes were still lowered, was watching, from beneath the
protection of those motionless eyelids, the young man's desire, the way she
always did when she thought no one was looking.  But strangest of all was
how upset she seemed, her hands quiet at her side, her face serious and
expressionless, without the trace of a smile, something she had never
displayed in Rene's presence.  A fleeting, almost imperceptible smile on
her lips as O leaned forward to set her glass of ice water on the table and
their eyes met, was all O needed to realize that Jacqueline was aware that
O knew the game was up.  It didn't bother her, though; it was rather O who
blushed.

   "Are you too warm?" Jacqueline said.  "We'll be leaving in five minutes.

   Red is becoming to you, by the way."

   Then she smiled again, turning her gaze to her interlocutor, a smile so
utterly tender that it seemed impossible.  He would not hasten to embrace
her.

   But he did not.  He was too young to know that motionlessness and
silence can be the lair of immodesty.  He allowed Jacqueline to get up,
shook hands with her, and said goodbye.  She would phone him.  He also said
goodbye to the shadow that O represented for him, and stood on the sidewalk
watching the black Buick disappear down the avenue between the sun-drenched
houses and the dark, almost purple sea.  The palm trees looked as though
they had been cut out of metal, the strollers like poorly fashioned wax
models, animated by some absurd mechanism.

   "You really like him all that much?" O said to Jacqueline as the car
left the city and moved along the upper coast road.

   "Is that any business of yours?" Jacqueline responded.  "It's Rene's
business," she retorted.

   "What is Rene's business, and Sir Stephen's, and, if I understand it
correctly, a number of other people's, is the fact you're badly seated.

   You're going to wrinkle your dress."

   O failed to move.

   "And I also thought," Jacqueline added, "that you weren't supposed to
cross your legs."

   But O was no longer listening.  What did she care about Jacqueline's
threats?  If Jacqueline threatened to inform on her for that peccadillo,
what did she think would keep her from denouncing Jacqueline in turn to
Rene?  Not that O lacked the desire to.  But Rene would not be able to bear
the news that Jacqueline was lying to him, or that she had plans of her own
which did not include him.  How could she make Jacqueline believe that if
she were to keep still, it would be to avoid seeing Rene lose face, turning
pale over someone other than herself, and perhaps revealing himself to be
too weak to punish her?  How could she convince her that her silence, even
more, would be the result of her fear at seeing Rene's wrath turned against
her, the bearer of ill tidings, the informer?  How could she tell
Jacqueline that she would not say a word, without giving the impression she
was making a mutual non-betrayal pact with her?  For Jacqueline' had the
idea that O was terrified, terrified to death at what would happen to her
if she, Jacqueline, talked.

   From that point on, until they got out of the car in the courtyard of
the old farm, they did not exchange another word.  Without glancing at O,
Jacqueline picked a white geranium growing beside the house.  O was
following closely enough behind to catch a whiff of the strong, delicate
odor of the leaf crumpled between her hands.  Did she believe she would
thus be able to mask the odor of her own sweat, which was making darkening
circles beneath the arms of her sweater and causing the black material to
cling to her armpits.

   In the big whitewashed room with the red-tile floor, Rene was alone.

   "You're late," he said when they came in.  "Sir Stephen's waiting for
you in the next room," he added, nodding to O.  "He needs you for
something. He's not in a very good mood."

   Jacqueline burst out laughing, and O looked at her and turned red.

   "You could have saved it for another time," said Rene, who
misinterpreted both Jacqueline's laugh and O's concern.

   "That's not the reason," Jacqueline said, "but I might say, Rene, your
obedient beauty isn't so obedient when you're not around.  Look at her
dress, you see how wrinkled it is?"

   O was standing in the middle of the room, facing Rene.  He told her to
turn around; she was rooted to the spot "She also crosses her legs,"
Jacqueline added, "but that you won't be able to see, of course.  As you
won't be able to see the way she accosts the boys."

   "That's not true," O shouted, "you're the one!" and she leaped at
Jacqueline.

   Rene grabbed her just as she was about to hit Jacque line, and she went
on struggling in his arms merely for the sake of feeling weaker than he, of
being at his mercy, when, lifting her head, she saw Sir Stephen standing in
the doorway looking at her.

   Jacqueline had thrown herself down on the sofa, her tiny face hardened
with anger and fear, and O could feel that Rene, though he had his hands
full trying to subdue her, had eyes only for Jacqueline.  She ceased
resisting and, crestfallen at the idea of having been found wanting in the
presence of Sir Stephen, she repeated, this time almost in a whisper: "It's
not true, I swear it's not true."

   Without uttering a word, without so much as a glance at Jacqueline, Sir
Stephen made a sign to Rene to let O go, and to O to go into the other
room.

   But on the other side of the door O, who was immediately wedged against
the wall, her belly and breasts seized, her lips forced apart by Sir
Stephen's insistent tongue, moaned with happiness and deliverance.  The
points of her breasts stiffened beneath his hand's caress, and with his
other hand Sir Stephen probed her loins so roughly she thought she would
faint.  Would she ever dare tell him that no pleasure, no joy, no figment
of her imagination could ever compete with the happiness she felt at the
way he used her with such utter freedom, at the notion that he could do
anything with her, that there was no limit, no restriction in the manner
with which, on her body, he might search for pleasure.  Her absolute
certainty that when he touched her, whether it was to fondle or flog her,
when he ordered her to do something it was solely because he wanted to, her
certainty that all he' cared about was his own desire, so over-whelmed and
gratified O that each time she saw a new proof of it, and often even when
it merely occurred to her in thought, a cape of fire, a burning breastplate
extending from the shoulders to the knees, descended upon her.  As she was
there, pinned against the wall, her eyes closed, her lips murmuring "I love
you" when she could find the breath to say them, Sir Stephen's hands,
though they were as cool as the waters of a bubbling spring on the fire
coursing through her from head to toe, made her burn even hotter.  Gently
he released her, dropping her skirt down over her moist thighs, closing her
bolero over her quivering breasts.  "Come, O," he said, "I need you."

   Then, opening her eyes, O noticed that they were not alone.  The big,
bare, whitewashed room, identical in all respects to the living room, also
opened, through a French door, onto the garden.  Seated in a wicker chair
on the terrace, which lay between the house and garden, an enormous man, a
giant of a creature with a cigarette between his lips, his head shaved and
his vast belly swelling beneath his open shirt and cloth trousers, was
gazing at O He rose and moved toward Sir Stephen, who was shoving O ahead
of him.  It was then that O noticed, dangling at the end of his watch
chain, the Roissy insignia that the man was sporting.  Still, Sir Stephen
politely introduced him to O, simply as "Commander," with no name attached,
and much to O's surprise she saw that he was kissing her hand, the first
time it had happened since she had been Involved with Roissy members (with
the exception of Sir Stephen).

   All three of them came back into the room, leaving the door open.  Sir
Stephen walked over to one end of the fireplace and rang.  On the Chinese
table beside the sofa, O saw a bottle of whisky, some soda water, and
glasses.  So he was not ringing for something to drink.  At the same time
she noticed a large cardboard box on the floor beside the fireplace.  The
man from Roissy had sat down on a.  wicker chair, Sir Stephen was
half-seated on the edge of the round table, with one leg dangling.  O, who
had been motioned over to the sofa, had meekly raised her skirt and could
feel the prickly cotton of the roughly woven Provencal upholstery.

   It was Norah who came in.  Sir Stephen ordered her to undress O and
remove her clothing from the room.  O allowed her to take off her bolero,
her dress, her whalebone belt which constricted her waist, and her sandals.
As soon as she had stripped O completely, Norah left, and O, automatically
reverting to the rules of Roissy, and certain that all Sir Stephen wanted
from her was perfect submissiveness, remained standing in the middle of the
room, her eyes lowered, so that she sensed rather than saw Natalie slip in
through the open window, dressed in black like her sister, barefoot and
silent.  Sir Stephen had doubtless explained who she was and why she was
there; to his visitor he merely mentioned her name, to which the visitor
did not respond, and asked her to make them a drink.  As soon as she had
handed them some whisky, soda water, and ice cubes (and, in the silence,
the clink of the ice cubes against the sides of the glasses made a
harrowing racket), the Commander got up from his wicker chair, in which he
had been sitting while O was being undressed and, with his glass in his
hand, walked over to O.  O thought that, with his free hand, he was going
to take her breast or seize her belly.  But he did not touch her, confining
himself to scrutinizing her closely, from her parted lips to her parted
knees.  He circled her, studying her breasts, her thighs, her hindquarters,
inspecting her in detail but offering no comment, and this careful scrutiny
and the presence of this gigantic body so close to her so overwhelmed O
that she wasn't sure whether she wanted to run away or, on the contrary,
have him throw her down and crush her.  So upset was she that she lost
control and raised her eyes toward Sir Stephen, searching for help.  He
understood, smiled, came over to her, and, taking both her hands, pulled
them behind her back, and held them in one of his.  She leaned back against
him, her eyes closed, and it was in a dream, or at least in the dusk of a
near-sleep born of exhaustion, the way she had heard as a child, still half
under the influence of ether, the nurses talking about her, thinking she
was still asleep, of her hair, her pallor, her flat belly where only the
faint early signs of pubescence were showing, it was in a dream that she
heard the stranger complimenting Sir Stephen on her, paying special due to
the pleasant contrast between her ample bosom and the narrow waist, the
irons which he found longer, thicker, and more.  visible than usual.  At
the same time, she learned that Sir Stephen had in all probability
consented to lend her to him the following week, since he was thanking Sir
Stephen for something.  At which point Sir Stephen, taking her by the nape
of the neck, gently told her to wake up and, with Natalie, to go upstairs
and wait in her room.

   Had she good reason to be so upset, and to be so annoyed at Natalie who,
elated at the prospect of seeing O opened by someone other than Sir
Stephen, was doing a kind of wild Indian dance around her and shouting:

   Do you think he'll go into your mouth too, O?  You should have seen the
way he was looking at your mouth!  Oh, how lucky you are to be desired like
that!  I'm sure that he'll whip you: he came back three times to those
marks where you can see you've been whipped.  At least you won't be
thinking about Jacqueline then!"

   'I'm not always thinking about Jacqueline, you silly fool," O replied.

   "No!  I'm not silly and I'm not a fool.  I know very well you miss her,"
the child said.

   It was true, but not completely.  What O missed was not, properly
speaking, Jacqueline, but the use of a girl's body, with no restrictions
attached.  If Natalie had not been declared off-limits to her, she would
have taken Natalie, and the only reason she had not violated the
restriction was her certainty that Natalie would be given to her at Roissy
in a few weeks' time, and that, some time previously, Natalie would be
handed over in her presence, by her, and thanks to her.  She was burning to
demolish the wall of air, of space, of--to use the only correct term void
between Natalie and her, and yet at the same time she was enjoying the wait
imposed upon her.  She said so to Natalie, who only shook her head and
refused to believe her.

   "If Jacqueline were here, and were willing," she said, "you'd caress
her."

   'Of course I would," O said with a laugh.

   "There, you see," the child broke in.

   How could she make her understand--and was it even worth the effort? 
that it wasn't so much that she was in love with Jacqueline, nor for that
matter with Natalie or any other girl in particular, but that she was only
in love with girls as such, girls in general--the way one can be in love
with one's own image--but in her case she always thought the other girls
were more lovely and desirable than she found herself to be.  The pleasure
she derived from seeing a girl pant beneath her caresses, seeing her eyes
close and the tips of her breasts stiffen beneath her lips and teeth, the
pleasure she got from exploring her fore and aft with her hand--and from
feeling her tighten around her fingers, then sigh and moan--was more than
she could bear; and if this pleasure was so intense, it was only because it
made her constantly aware of the pleasure which she in turn gave when she
tightened around whoever was holding her, whenever she sighed or moaned,
with this difference, that she could not conceive of being given thus to a
girl, the way this girl was given to her, but only to a man.  Moreover, it
seemed to her that the girls she caressed belonged by right to the man to
whom she belonged, and that she was only present by proxy.  Had Sir Stephen
come into her room during one of those previous afternoons when Jacqueline
had been wont to nap with her, and found O caressing her, she would have
spread her charge's thighs and held them apart with both hands, without the
slightest remorse, and in fact with the greatest of pleasure, if it had
pleased Sir Stephen to possess her, rather than peering at her through the
trellised wall as he had done.  She was apt at hunting, a naturally trained
bird of prey who would beat the game and always bring it back to the
hunter. And speaking of the devil.

   It was at this point, just as she was thinking again with beating heart
of Jacqueline's lips, so pink and dainty beneath her downy fur, of the even
more delicate and pinker ring between her buttocks, which she had only
dared force on three occasions, that she heard Sir Stephen moving about in
his room.  She knew that he could see her, although she could not see him,
and once again she felt that she was fortunate indeed to be constantly
exposed this way, constantly imprisoned by these all-encompassing eyes. 
Young Natalie was seated on the white rug in the middle of the room, like a
fly in a bowl of milk; while O, standing in front of the massive bureau
which also served as her dressing table, and able to see herself from head
to waist in a slightly greenish antique mirror which was streaked like the
wrinkles in a pond, looked for all the world like one of those late
nineteenth-century prints in which the women are wandering naked through
their chambers in a subdued light, even though it is mid-summer.

   When Sir Stephen pushed open the door, she turned around so abruptly
that one of the irons between her legs struck one of the bronze knobs of
the bureau upon which she was leaning, and jingled.

   "Natalie," Sir Stephen said, "run downstairs and get the white cardboard
box in the front living room."

   When Natalie came back, she set the box down on the bed, opened it, and
one by one removed the objects inside, unwrapping the paper in which they
were packed, and handing them to Sir Stephen.  They were masks, a
combination headpiece and mask; it was obvious they had been made to cover
the entire head, with the exception of the mouth and chin--and of course
the slits for eyes.  Sparrow-hawk, falcon, owl, fox, lion, bull: nothing
but animal masks, but scaled to the size of the human head, made of real
fur and feathers, the eye crowned with lashes when the actual animal had
lashes (as the lion), and with the pelts or feathers descending to the
shoulders of the person wearing them.  To make the mask fit snugly along
the upper lips (there was an orifice for each nostril) and along both
cheeks, all one had to do was adjust a fairly loose strap concealed inside
this cope-like affair which hung down the back.  A frame made of molded,
hardened cardboard located between the outside facing and the inner lining
of skin, kept the shape of the mask rigid.  In front of the full-length
mirror, O tried on each of the masks.

   The most striking, and the one she thought transformed her most and was
also most natural, was one of the owl masks (there were two), no doubt
because it was composed of tan and tawny feathers whose color blended
beautifully with her tan; the cope of feathers almost completely concealed
her shoulders, descending half way down her back and, in front, to the
nascent curve of her breasts.  Sir Stephen had her rub the lipstick from
her lips, then said to her as she took off the mask:

   "All right, you'll be an owl for the Commander." But O, and I hope you
forgive me, you'll be taken on a leash.  Natalie, go look in tile top
drawer of my desk, you'll find a chain and a pair of pliers."

   Natalie came back with the chain and pliers, which Sir Stephen used to
force open the last link, fastened It to the second ring that O was wearing
In: her loins, then forced it closed again.  The chain, similar to those
used for dogs--in fact that was what it was--was between four and five feet
long, with a leather strap on one end.  After O had again donned tile mask,
Sir Stephen told Natalie to take the end of tile chain and walk around the
room, ahead of O.  Three times Natalie paraded around the room, trading O
behind her by the rings, O being naked and masked.

   "Well, I must say," Sir Stephen remarked, "the Commander was right--all
the hair will have to be removed.  But that can wait till tomorrow.

   Meanwhile, keep your chain on"'

   That evening, and for the first time in the company of Jacqueline and
Natalie, of Rene and Sir Stephen, O dined naked, her chain pulled up
between her legs and across her buttocks and wrapped around her waist.

   Norah--was alone serving, and O avoided her gaze.  Two hours before, Sir
Stephen had summoned her.

   What shocked and upset the girl at the beauty parlor tile following day,
more than the Irons and the black and blue marks on her lower back, were
the brand new lacerations.  O had gone there to have the offending hair
removed,.  and it did no good to explain to her that this wax-type
depilatory, a method in which tile wax is applied and allowed to harden,
then suddenly removed, taking the hair with it--was no more painful than
being struck with the riding crop.  No matter how many times she repeated
it, or made an attempt to explain, if not what her fate was, at least that
she was happy, there was no way of reassuring her or allaying her feeling
of disgust and terror.  The only visible result of O's efforts to soothe
her was that, instead of being looked upon with pity, as she had been at
first, she was beheld with horror.  It made no difference how kind and
profuse were her thanks when she left the little alcove where she had been
spread-eagled as though for love, nor did it matter how generous a tip she
gave as she left, when it was all over, she had the feeling that she was
being evicted rather than leaving of her own free will.  What did she care?
It was obvious to her that there was something shocking about the contrast
between the fur on her belly and the feathers on her mask, as it was
obvious that this air of an Egyptian statue which this mask lent her, and
which her broad shoulders, narrow waist, and long legs only served to
emphasize, to demand that her flesh be perfectly smooth.  Only the effigies
of primitive goddesses portrayed so proudly and openly the cleft of the
belly between whose outer lips appeared the more delicate line of the lower
lips.  And had any ever been seen sporting rings in their nether lips?  O
recalled the plump redhaired girl at Anne-Marie's who had said that all her
master ever used the belly ring for was to attach her to the foot of the
bed, and she had also said that the reason he wanted her shaved was because
only in that way was she completely naked.  O was worried about displeasing
Sir Stephen, who so enjoyed pulling her over to him by the fleece, but she
was mistaken: Sir Stephen found her more moving that way, and after she had
donned her mask, having removed all trace of lipstick above and below, the
upper and nether lips then being so uncommonly pale, that he caressed her
almost timidly, the way one does with an animal one wants to tame.

   He had told her nothing about the place to which he was taking her, nor
indicated the time they would have to leave, nor had he said who the
Commander's guests would be.  But he came and spent the rest of the
afternoon sleeping beside her, and in the evening had dinner brought up to
the' room, for the two of them.

   They left an hour before midnight, in the Buick, O swathed in a great
brown mountaineer's cape and wearing wooden clogs on her feet.

   Natalie, in a black sweater and slacks, was holding her chain, the
leather strap of which was attached to the leather bracelet Natalie was
wearing on her right wrist.

   Sir Stephen was driving.  The moon was almost full, and illuminated the
road with large snow-like spots, also illuminating the trees and houses of
the villages through which they passed, leaving everything else as black as
India ink.  Here and there, groups of people were still clustered, even at
this hour, on the thresholds of street side doors, and they could feel the
people's curiosity aroused by the passage of that closed car (Sir Stephen
had not lowered the top).  Some dogs were barking.  On the side of the road
bathed in moonlight, the olive trees looked like silver clouds floating six
feet above the ground, and the cypresses like black feathers.  There was
nothing real about this country, which night had turned into make-believe,
nothing except the smell of sage and lavender.  The road continued to
climb, but the same warm layer of air still lay heavy over the earth.  O
slipped her cape down off her shoulders.  She couldn't be seen, there was
not a soul left in sight.

   Ten minutes later, having skirted a forest of green oak on the crest of
a hill, Sir Stephen slowed down before a long wall into which was cut a
portecochere, which opened at the approach of the car.  He parked in some
forecourt as they were closing the gate behind him, then got out and helped
Natalie and O out, first having ordered O to leave her cape and clogs in
the car.

   The door he pushed open revealed a cloister with Renaissance arcades on
three sides, the fourth side being an extension of the flagstone court of
the cloister proper.  A dozen couples were dancing on the terrace and in
the courtyard, a few women with very low-cut dresses and some men in white
dinner Jackets were seated at small tables lighted by candlelight; the
record player was in the left-hand gallery, and a buffet table had been set
up in the gallery to the right.

   The moon provided as much light as the candles, though, and when it fell
full upon O, who was being pulled forward by her black little shadow,
Natalie, those who noticed her stopped dancing, and the men got to their
feet.  The boy near the record player, sensing that something was
happening, turned around and, taken completely aback, stopped the record. O
had come to a halt; Sir Stephen, motionless two steps behind her, was also
waiting..

   The Commander dispersed those who had gathered around O and had already
called for torches to examine her more closely.

   "Who is she," they were saying, "who does she belong to?"

   "You, if you like," he replied, and he led O and Natalie over to a
corner of the terrace where a stone bench covered with cushions was set
against a low wall.

   When O was seated, her back against the wall, her hands lying on her
knees, with Natalie on the ground to the left of her feet, still holding
onto the chain, he turned around to them.  O's eyes searched for Sir
Stephen, and at first could not find him.  Then she sensed his presence,
reclining on a chaise lounge at the other corner of the terrace.  He was
able to see her, she was reassured.  The music had begun again, the dancers
were dancing again.

   As they danced, one or two couples moved over in her direction, as
though by accident at first then one of the couples dropped the pretense
and, with the woman leading the way, marched boldly over.  O stared at them
with eyes that, beneath her plumage, were darkened with bister, eyes opened
wide like the eyes of the nocturnal bird she was impersonating, and the
illusion was so extraordinary that no one thought of questioning her, which
would have been the most natural thing to do, as though she were a real
owl, deaf to human language, and dumb.

   From midnight till dawn, which began to lighten the eastern sky at about
five, as the moon waned and descended toward the west people came up to her
several times, and some even touched her, they formed a circle around her
several times and several times they parted her knees and lifted the chain,
bringing with them one of those two-branched candlesticks of Provencal
earthenware--and she could feel the flames from the candles warming the
inside of her thighs--to see how she was attached There was even one
drunken American who, laughing grabbed her, but when he realized that he
had seized a fistful of flesh and the chain which pierced her, he suddenly
sobered up, and O saw his face fill with the same expression of horror and
contempt that she had seen on the face of the girl who had given her a
depilatory; he turned and fled.

   There was another girl very young, a girl with bare shoulders and a
choker of pearls around her neck, wearing one of those white dresses young
girls wear to their first ball, two tea-scented roses at her waist and a
pair of golden slippers on her feet, and a boy made her sit down next to O,
on her right.  Then he took her hand and made her caress O's breasts, which
quivered to the touch of the cool, light fingers, and touch her belly, and
the chain, and the hole through which it passed, the young girl silently.
did as she was bid, and when the boy said he planned to do the same thing
to her, she did not seem shocked.  But even though they thus made use of O,
and even though they used her in this way as a model, or the subject of a
demonstration, not once did anyone ever speak to her directly.  Was she
then of stone or wax, or rather some creature from another world, and did
they think it pointless to speak to her?  Or didn't they dare?  It was only
after daybreak, after all the dancers had left' that Sir Stephen and the
Commander, awakening Natalie who was asleep at O's feet, helped O to her
feet, led her to the middle of the courtyard, unfastened her chain and
removed her mask and, laying her back upon a table, possessed her one after
the other.

   In a final chapter, which has been suppressed, O returned to Roissy,
where she was abandoned by Sir Stephen.

   There exists a second ending to the story of O, according to which O,
seeing that Sir Stephen was about to leave her, said she would prefer to
die.

   Sir Stephen gave her his consent.


The Story of O


