relentlessly, imperatively.'
'Please,' she said.
'To be sure,' I said, 'it is not as though you were a slave, and this were to occur within the full comprehension of a categorical bondage.'
'Please!' she said.
'You are pretty,' I said. I put my hand on her.
'In the manner of the master!' she said. 'Please, in the manner of the master!'
'But you are a free woman,' I said.
'Please!' she begged. 'Ohhh! Ohhhhh!'
'Steady!' I said.' I did not want her to hurt herself in the stocks.
Her small shoulders thrust up suddenly against the collar stocks. Her small hands pulled back in the wrist stocks, but could not escape their grasp. Her hands opened and closed. Her head turned to the side, her eyes closed.
'Steady!' I said.
But apparently she could not control herself. She was in the grip of her own needs, which seized her and would do as they pleased with her, having their way with her, whether she wished it or not, giving her no quarter.
Then she subsided, and looked at me, wonderingly.
'Are you all right?' I asked.
'Yes,' she breathed.
I inspected her limbs, where they were enclosed in the stocks. There was some redness, and some minor abrasions from scraping, on the ankles, and neck, but it was nothing serious.
'What you did to me!' she said.
'As I told you before,' I said, 'it is your body, and your sensitivity.'
'If I were a slave, you would own them, you would own it all!'
'You are a free woman,' I said.
She looked at me wildly, protestingly.
'It is your body,' I said.
'But you made it do what you wanted,' she said, 'behave as you wished!'
'Perhaps,' I said.
I freed her neck of the planks, putting them to the side.
'I could not help myself,' she said. 'You made me behave as though I might have been a puppet, on strings!'
I freed her ankles. 'Perhaps,' I said.
I stood up.
She looked up at me, her wrists still in the wrist stocks, these stocks keeping her, in virtue of the slots and fastenings, on the bench.
'I could not believe my feelings,' she said, 'what you made me feel!'
I freed the wrist stocks from the rings and clips which held it in its slots in the armrests. It could now be lifted out of the slots. She still, of course, wore it. If she were to stand it would still be on her. Sometimes, incidentally, such stocks, and similar stocks, are used to fasten a girl's hands behind her body, at the sides. There is a large variety of stocks, and yokes, of course, for various purposes.
She looked up at me.
'I did very little,' I said.
'Consider the nature of my responses!' she said.
'I did very little,' I said.
I freed her wrists of the stocks, and put the stocks to the side.
'But my responses!' she said.
'I, if anything, merely triggered them,' I said.
'No,' she said. 'You summoned them, you called them forth!'
'If you wish,' I said.
'You mastered and commanded them!'
'If you wish,' I said.
'As you may now master and command me!' she said, suddenly kneeling before me.
I looked down on her.
She put her head down and kissed my feet, as eagerly and avidly as an ardent slave, hoping to please her master. Then she lifted her head, and looked up at me, tears in her eyes.
'I cannot believe what I felt!' she said.
'You look well on your knees,' I said.
'It is where I belong,' she said, 'before you.'
'Before men,' I said.
'Yes,' she said, 'before men!'
'It was only a touch,' I said.
'Do not forget,' she said, 'that you had put me at your mercy, and that I was controlled and helpless.'
'Still it was only a touch,' I said.
'It was in an entire context,' she said.
'That is true,' I said.
'And the thing is a wholeness,' she said.
'Perhaps,' I said.
'And there was in me, I sense now, a readiness for that experience,' she said, 'and a fittingness in me for it. Too, in it I sensed the hint of a possibility, of a modality of existence, of a way I might be, of a possible way of life.'
'I did very little,' I said.
'It was you,' she said, 'who constructed the entire context of surrender, of helplessness, of submission.'
'Of submission?' I asked.
'Yes!' she said.
'Interesting remarks,' I said, 'from a Cosian spy.'
'Forget what I have been,' she said. 'Think of me now only as what I am, and only am, a woman at your feet!'
'I see,' I said.
'For the first time,' she said, 'I begin to sense what it might be to belong to a man, to be his, totally.'
'I see,' I said.
'And the perfection, and rightfulness, of it,' she said.
'I see,' I said.
'It is morning,' she whispered.
'Yes,' I said.
She then crawled back, on all fours, a few feet, and put her head to the floor, the palms of her hands, too, on the floor, in a common position of obeisance. 'I hope to be pleasing to you today,' she said.
'That is a slave formula,' I said. With such formulas a girl might greet her master in the morning.
'I know,' she said.
'And you know what is involved in such formulas?' I asked.
'Yes,' she said.
'And you still dare to say such?'
'Yes,' she said.
'Very well,' I said. 'You will be held to it, as a slave, and if you are not pleasing have no fear but what, also as a slave, you will be suitably, and severely, punished.'
'That is as I wish it,' she said.
'You may raise your head,' I said.
