The Story of O
By Pauline Réage

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
  René'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 nightgown," René 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 the Carmelites or the
  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 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 château: 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 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 - René 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 René 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?" René said.
  "I was just going to start," she answered, "but I got up late, took a
  batch, 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?" René went on.
  "Yes," she said. "But where are you calling from?"
  He ignored her question, merely adding:
  "Did you keep your ring on?"
  She had 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 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 drawer. That would be René'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 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 kin 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 none the less 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 ws 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 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 - René 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 the picture printed with as little
  contrast as possible. She had taken another picture of Jacqueline with
  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 inwardly 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 platform on which she had been posting 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 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 doing
  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 love, with whom she had a dinner date. She looked at
  them as she was putting on her make-up 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
  mid-December, 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. 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 when 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 tip 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. René 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
  turning 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
  René. He smiled at her tenderly, took her by the hand, and turning
  toward a sort of grizzled athlete, introduced her tin English to Sir
  Stephen H. O was offered a stool between the two men, and as she was
  about to sit down René 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.
  René was drinking a martini, Sir Stephen a whisky. He nursed his whisky,
  then waited till René had drunk his second martini and O the grapefruit
  juice that René 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 white-washed 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, René'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
  René to have coffee at his place. They all dined very lightly, and O
  realized that they had been careful to drink very little, and had kept
  her from virtually 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, René.
  The simplest thing would be to go straight to my house."
  René took the wheal. 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
  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. René 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 cluster 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.
  René 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, René 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, would she ever learn, and would she
  ever learn, a gesture stealthy enough so that when she lifted her skirt
  no would notice, so that she could forget her nakedness, her submission?
  Not, in any case, as long as René and that stranger were staring at her
  in silence, as they were presently doing. Finally she gave in. Sir
  Stephen stirred the fire, René suddenly went behind the sofa and,
  seizing O by the throat and the hair, pulled her head down against 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 René 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 none the less 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 fingers over her eyebrows, then over her lips. Then he
  sat down facing her on the opposite side of the fireplace, and when René
  had also sat down in an armchair, he began to speak.
  "I don't believe René 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 René and I are not actually relatives, and yet,
  in a way, we are brothers. That René loves you I have no doubt. I would
  have known even if he hadn't told me, even if 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, René 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
  grand 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 quit, 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. René 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," René 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 talked 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 for a
  long time, perhaps forever, at Roissy. For since her return, René 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 remained silent - the only person she suspected was
  Jacqueline (and if Jacqueline 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 w anted from he 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 René 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 René. "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 hers, as were
  René'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 grand 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 René, "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 snuffled 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 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, but 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 René 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 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 René 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 René. 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 René,
  terrified lest he should see what was in her eyes and perhaps deem it as
  a betrayal. And yet it was not betrayal, for if she were to weigh her
  desire to belong to Sir Stephen against her belonging to René, she would
  not have had a second's hesitation: the only reason she was yielding to
  this desire was that René 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 René 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. René was
  leaving O to her own devices. René 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, René 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 found disgusting: Family Punishment.
  With one hand, René 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 pen her knees wider.
  She obeyed without saying a word. The honors René 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 again, caressed her until she moaned. She was vanquished, undone,
  and humiliated that she had moaned.
  "I leave you to Sir Stephen," René 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. Her 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 René 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 of 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. He 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 had used
  her 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 order his order. But not here. René 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 the meaning from René'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 René, and Sir Stephen had opened her thighs with both
  his hands, René 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 that he might rend O.
  "O is yours," René had replied, "O will be pleased to be rent."
  And he had leaned down over her and kissed her hands.
  The very idea that René 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 René,
  who so passionately loved to see her beneath the bodies or the blows of
  others beside 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 René 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 judgement, 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 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 her 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 René, but you're easy. Does
  René 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 René," O replied.
  "You love René, but you desire me, among others," Sir Stephen went on.
  Yes, she did desire him, but what if René, 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 the
  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 climax. 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."
  René 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 René'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 René's training
  leave a great deal to be desired."
  "I always obey René," 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 René 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 he 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
  forcing his way. René 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
  René'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 René, and wanted him to feel something more than desire for
  her. Not that she was in love, but because she clearly saw that René
  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 that René would follow Sir Stephen's example
  and emulate his attitude, and that if Sir Stephen were to show contempt
  for her René would be contaminated by it, no matter how much he loved
  her, contaminated in a way he had never 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
  René's master, without René's being fully aware of it, which is to say
  that René admired him and wanted to emulate him, to compete with him,
  and why he had given O to him: this time it was apparent that she had
  been given with no strings attached. René would probably go on loving
  her insofar as Sir Stephen deemed that she was worth the trouble and
  would love her himself. Till then, it was clear that Sir Stephen would
  be her master and, regardless of what René might think, her only master,
  in the precise relationship 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 René' 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 pink -
  removed 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 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 living-room 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, planed 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: "René
  phoned that he would come by for you at the studio at six o'clock,"
  signed with and 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 René 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 René 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; René 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 the
  brothels, so why should they treat her otherwise? "I love you, I love
  you, René," she repeated, softly calling to him in the solitude of her
  room, "" 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 absent-minded 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 René, she
  would have sworn: "Fatal for Sir Stephen", and have added: "and he'll
  know it too." But her love for René and René'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 then 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 had met René. In
  the space of a week she learned fear, but certainty; anguish, but
  happiness. René 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 René 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 René 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 of 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
  René, men she noticed only to the extent that the love René gave her,
  the certainty of belonging to René, made her happy and filled her cup of
  happiness to overflowing, and insofar as her total submission to René
  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, René 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 René 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 on her lips and tongues 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 René 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 at the hands of the living God. Every time René 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 was nothing, despair for
  nothing, nothing was true. René 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 René
  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 days 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, René 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 René was a night which
  would last forever.
  René 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 on 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," René called after her, without letting
  go of O, whom he was holding around the waist, "please don't go!"
  O introduced them: Jacqueline, René; René, 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 René'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 hoar-frost 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 would 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 René returned than, completely
  reassured by his presence, she recovered her taste for others and for
  herself, her zest for life.
  They left together, all thee 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 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 fastened 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 half-closed 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 girlfriend 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 in whom she failed to detect some element of
  beauty. She remembered that, just out of the lycée, she had tried to
  seduce an ugly, disagreeable, constantly ill-natured little girl for the
  sole reason that she had a wild mop of blonde 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 make-up 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 girlfriends, 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
  girlfriends had 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 tree 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
  school girls whom O, as a lycée 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 hangars. 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 lycée. 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 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. On 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 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 René 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 on would need to tech her
  anything: neither to remain silent nor now 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 blonde 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 René 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 René was
  leaving her free, and because she loathed her freedom. Her freedom was
  worse than any chains. Her freedom was separating her from René. 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 cam to her not
  from René, but from Sir Stephen.
  

  
  As the months went by since the day René had given her to Sir Stephen, O
  was terrified to 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 René 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 René was
  away from Paris). She also noticed that when René 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
  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 René 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 René, 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 ad in
  the same place, belonged both to René and to other men. Why did René, in
  Sir Stephen's presence, refrain not only from taking her, but from
  giving her any order? (All he ever did was pass on Sir Stephen's.) She
  asked him why, certain beforehand of the reply.
  "Out of respect," René replied.
  "But I belong to you," O had said.
  "You belong to Sir Stephen first."
  And it was true, at least in the sense that when René had surrendered
  her to his friend the surrender had been absolute, that Sir Stephen's
  slightest desired took precedence over René's decisions as far as she
  was concerned, and even over her own. If René 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, René 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 René to please ask Sir
  Stephen to change the day, because she so much wanted to go with René to
  a party to which they were both invited. René 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 not 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-of-pearl, the room adjoining the yellow and gray living room.
  René 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 René'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:
  "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 and 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 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 René 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 René that. She also told him that she no longer had any inclination
  not to obey Sir Stephen, realizing full well that from this René 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 René 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. René 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 writing, 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 René's passion all the greater, as O
  could plainly see. All 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 René's eyes, was nothing compared to the proof Sir
  Stephen provided. Each time she emerged from his arms, René 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 crueler, 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.) René 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, welt 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 René and Sir Stephen were there to
  remind her.
  René, 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 René 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 René,
  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 René's absences,
  whether he would come alone, or indeed whether he would even come at
  all. She did not dare speak about it to René.
  On morning when the cleaning woman had 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: "René" (for there were times when René 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 René."
  But René, 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 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 René, the basic
  reason for her being upset was actually still the same: her own
  self-consciousness. The only difference was that this self-consciousness
  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 René. 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 understand 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 present, already master. Sir Stephen was a far
  more demanding but also a far surer master than René. And however
  passionately O loved René, 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 give 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 René 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 yes, 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 begin, however, when he
  broke off to settle O deeper and farther back in the chair; with hr 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 judge-like 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 René 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 girlfriends 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 René, 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
  René without letting go of her - in fact she felt his hand probe deeper
  into her - had ceased addressing her, and addressed himself to René. She
  thought she knew why: with René there, the accord between Sir Stephen
  and René concerning her was established, 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 flat 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 rung. Her face was flooded with sunshine: she closed her eyes.
  Later, much later, she must have remembered overhearing the conversation
  between Sir Stephen and René, 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 René 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 René
  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 hat 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 René'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. René,
  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, without 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 suitcoat, for he
  had come back beside her. He and René each took her by one hand and
  helped her to her feet. René 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 banks 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 René 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 waters' 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 barely breathe.
  "O..." Sir Stephen said.
  "Yes," O said, faintly.
  "O, what I'm going to speak to you about i have already discussed with
  René, 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 water was changing plates, bringing O the menu so she
  could choose the dessert. O handed it to Sir Stephen. A soufflé? Yes, a
  soufflé. 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 your 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 René. Almost in a whisper, she murmured: "René..."
  Sir Stephen heard it.
  "René 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, René'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 René (or by anyone else), as she had been by him in René's
  presence (and at Roissy by a whole host of others). From this she should
  not conclude that René would be the only one to humiliate her by handing
  her over to a man who did not lover 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 then, 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 René 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 René 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?
  "René's and yours," she said.
  "No," Sir Stephen said, "mine. René 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 mar, which would not absolve her from the
  obligation of being a common-property slave, Sir Stephen's and the
  traces 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 the 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 René 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
  betrayal, 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.

Next Part III : Anne-Marie and the Rings
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