The Story of O
By Pauline Réage

III
Anne-Marie and the Rings

  O had believed, or wanted to believe, in order to give herself a good
  excuse, that Jacqueline would be uncommonly shy. She was enlightened on
  this score the moment she decided to open her eyes.
  The modest air Jacqueline assumed - closing the door to the mirrored
  make-up room where she dressed and undressed - was in fact clearly
  intended to inflame O, to instill in her the desire to force the door
  which, had it been left wide open, she would never have made up her mind
  to enter. That O's decision finally came from an authority outside
  herself, and was not the result of that basic strategy, could not have
  been further from Jacqueline's mind. At first O was amused by it. As she
  helped Jacqueline arrange her hair, for example, after Jacqueline had
  taken off the clothes she had posed in and was slipping into her
  turtle-neck sweater and the turquoise necklace the same color as her
  eyes, O found herself amazingly delighted at the idea that the very same
  evening Sir Stephen would be apprised of Jacqueline's every gesture -
  whether she had allowed O to fondle, through the black sweater, her
  small, well-spaced breasts, whether she had lowered her eyelids till
  those lashes, fairer than her skin, were touching her cheeks; whether
  she had sighed or moaned. When O embraced her, she became heavy,
  motionless and seemly expectant in her arms, her lips parted slightly
  and her hair cascaded back. O always had to be careful to hold her by
  both her shoulders and lean her up against the frame of a door or
  against a table. Otherwise she would have slipped to the floor, her eyes
  closed, without a sound. The minute O let go of her, she would again
  turn into ice and snow, laughing and distant, and would say: "You've got
  lipstick on me," and would wipe her mouth. It was this distant stranger
  that O enjoyed betraying by carefully noting - so as not to forget
  anything and be able to relate everything in detail - the slow flush of
  her cheeks, the smell of sage and sweat. Of Jacqueline it was impossible
  to say that she was forbearing or that she was on her guard. When she
  yielded to the kisses - and all she had so far granted O were kisses,
  which she accepted without returning - she yielded abruptly and, it
  seemed, totally, as though for ten seconds, or five minutes, she had
  become someone else. The rest of the time she was both coquettish and
  coy, incredibly clever at parrying an attack, contriving never to lay
  herself open either to a word or gesture, or even a look which would
  allow the victor to coincide with the vanquished or give O to believe
  that it was all that simple to take possession of her mouth. The only
  indication one had as a guide, the only thing that gave one to suspect
  troubled waters beneath the calm surface of her look was an occasional,
  apparently involuntary trace of a smile on her triangular face, similar
  to the smile of a cat, as fleeting and disturbing, and as uncertain, as
  a cat's. Yet it did not take O long to realize that this smile could be
  provoked by two things, and Jacqueline was totally unaware of either.
  The first was the gifts that were given to her, the second, any clear
  evidence of the desire she aroused - providing, however, that the person
  who desired her was someone who might be useful to her or who flattered
  her vanity. In what way was O useful to her? Or was it simply that O was
  an exception and that Jacqueline enjoyed being desired by O both because
  she took solace in O's manifest admiration and also because a woman's
  desire is harmless and of no consequence? Still in all, O was convinced
  that if, instead of bringing Jacqueline a mother-of-pearl brooch or the
  latest creation of Hermes' scarves on which I Love You was printed in
  every language under the sun, she were to offer Jacqueline the hundred
  or two hundred francs she seemed constantly to need, Jacqueline would
  have changed her tune about never having the time to have lunch or tea
  at O's place, or would have stopped evading her caresses. But of this O
  never had any proof. She had only barely mentioned it to Sir Stephen,
  who was chiding her for her slowness, when René stepped in. The five or
  six times that René had come by for O, when Jacqueline had happened to
  be there, the three of them had gone together to the Weber bar or to one
  of the English bars in the vicinity of the Madeleine; on these occasions
  René would contemplate Jacqueline with precisely the same mixture of
  interest, self-assurance, and arrogance with which he would gaze, at
  Roissy, at the girls who were completely at his disposal. The arrogance
  slid harmlessly off Jacqueline's solid, gleaming armor, and Jacqueline
  was not even aware of it. By a curious contradiction, O was disturbed by
  it, judging an attitude which she considered quite natural and normal
  for herself, insulting for Jacqueline. Was she taking up cudgels in
  defense of Jacqueline, or was it merely that she wanted her all to
  herself? She would have been hard put to answer that question, all the
  more so because she did not have her all to herself - at least not yet.
  But if she finally did succeed, she had to admit it was thanks to René.
  On three occasions, upon leaving the bar where they had given Jacqueline
  considerably more whisky than she should have drunk - her cheeks were
  flushed and shining, her eyes hard - he had driven her home before
  taking O to Sir Stephen's.
  Jacqueline lived in one of those lugubrious Passy lodging houses into
  which hordes of White Russians had piled immediately following the
  Revolution, and from which they had never moved. The entrance hall was
  painted in imitation oak, and on the stairway the spaces between the
  banisters were covered with dust, and the green carpeting had been worn
  down till it was threadbare in many places. Each time René wanted to
  come in - and to date he had never got beyond the front door -
  Jacqueline would jump out of the car, cry "not tonight" or "thanks so
  much," and slam the car door behind her as though she had suddenly been
  burned by some tongue of flame. And it was true, O would say to herself,
  that she was being pursued by fire. It was admirable that Jacqueline had
  sensed it, even though she had no concrete evidence of it as yet. At
  least she realized that she had to be on her guard with René, whose
  detachment did not seem to affect her in the slightest. (Or did it? And
  as far as seeming unaffected, two could play at that game, and René was
  a worthy opponent for her).
  The only time that Jacqueline let O come into the house and follow her
  up to her room, O had understood why she had so adamantly refused René
  permission to set foot in the house. What would have happened to her
  prestige, her black-and-white legend on the slick pages of the posh
  fashion magazines, if someone other than a woman like herself had seen
  the sordid lair from which the glorious creature issued forth every day?
  The bed was never made, at most the bedclothes were more or less pulled
  up, and the sheet which was visible was dirty and greasy, for Jacqueline
  never went to bed without massaging her face with cold cream, and she
  fell asleep too quickly to think of wiping it off. Sometime in the past
  a curtain had apparently partitioned off the toilet from the room: all
  that remained on the triangular shaped curtain rod were two rings and a
  few shreds of cloth. The color was faded from everything: from the rug,
  from the wallpaper whose pink and gray flowers were crawling upward like
  vegetation gone wild and become petrified on the imitation white
  trellis. One would have had to throw everything out and start again from
  scratch: scrape off the wallpaper, throw out the rug, sand the floors.
  But without waiting for that, one could in any case have cleaned off the
  dirt that, like so many strata, ringed the enamel of the basin,
  immediately wiped off and put into some kind of order the bottles of
  make-up remover and the jars of cream, cleaned up the powder box, wiped
  off the dressing table, thrown out the dirty cotton, opened the windows.
  But, straight and cool and clean and smelling of eau de Cologne and wild
  flowers, dirt-proof and impeccable, Jacqueline could not have cared less
  about her filthy room. What she did care about, however, what caused her
  no end of concern, was her family.
  It was because of her hovel, which O was frank enough to have mentioned
  to René, that René made a proposal which was to alter their lives, but
  it was because of her family that Jacqueline accepted. René's suggestion
  was that Jacqueline should come and live with O. "Family" was a gross
  misunderstatement: it was a clan, or rather a horde. Grandmother,
  mother, aunt, and even a maid - four women ranging in age from fifty to
  seventy, strident, heavily made up, smothered beneath onyx and their
  black silks, sobbing and wailing at four in the morning in the faint red
  light of the icons, with the cigarette smoke swirling thickly about
  them, four women drowning in the clicking of the tea glasses and the
  harsh hissing of a language Jacqueline would gladly have given half her
  life to forget - she was going out of her mind having to submit to their
  orders, to listen to them, merely having to see them. Whenever she saw
  her mother lifting a piece of sugar to her mouth before drinking her
  tea, Jacqueline would set down her own glass and retreat to her dry and
  dusty pigsty, leaving all three of them behind, her grandmother, her
  mother, and her mother's sister, with their hair dyed black, their
  closely knit eyebrows, and their wide, doelike, disapproving eyes -
  there in her mother's room which doubled as a living room, there where,
  besides, the fourth female, the maid, ended by resembling them. She
  fled, banging the doors behind her, and they called after her: "Choura,
  Choura, little dove," just as in the novels of Tolstoy, for her name was
  not Jacqueline. Jacqueline was her professional name, a name chosen to
  forget her real name, and with it this sordid but tender gynaeceum, and
  to set herself up in the French sun, in a solid world where there are
  men who do marry you and not disappear, as had the father she had never
  known, into the vast arctic wastes from which he had never returned. She
  took after him completely, she used to tell herself with a mixture of
  anger and delight, she had his hair and high cheekbones, his complexion
  and his slanting eyes. All she was grateful for to her mother was having
  given her this blond devil as a father, this demon whom the snows had
  reclaimed as the earth reclaims other men. What she resented was that
  her mother had forgotten him quickly enough to have given birth one fine
  day to a dark-complexioned little girl the issue of a short-lived
  liaison, her half-sister by an unknown father, whose name was Natalie.
  Now fifteen, Natalie only saw them during vacation. Her father, never.
  But he provided for Natalie's room and board in a lycée not far from
  Paris, and gave her mother a monthly stipend on which the three women
  and the maid - and even Jacqueline till now - had subsisted, albeit
  poorly, in an idleness which to them was paradise. Whatever remained
  from Jacqueline's earnings as a model, after she had bought her
  cosmetics and lingerie, and her shoes and dresses - all of which came
  from the top fashion houses and were, even after the discount she
  received as a model, frightfully expensive - was swallowed by the gaping
  maw of the family purse and disappeared, God only knows where.
  Obviously, Jacqueline could have chosen to have a lover to support her,
  and she had not lacked the opportunity. She had in fact had a lover or
  two, less because she liked them - not that she actually disliked them -
  than because she wanted to prove to herself that she was capable of
  provoking desire and inflaming a man to the point of love. The only one
  of the two - the second - who had been wealthy and made her a present of
  a very lovely pearl with a slight pink tint which she wore on her left
  hand, but she had refused to live with him, and since he had refused to
  marry her, she had left him, with no great regrets, merely relieved that
  she was not pregnant (she had thought she was, for several days had
  lived in a state of dread at the idea). No, to live with a lover was
  lose face, to forsake one's chances for the future, it was to do what
  her mother had done with Natalie's father, and that was out of the
  question.
  With O, however, it was quite another matter. A polite fiction made it
  possible to pretend that Jacqueline was simply moving in with a girl
  friend, with whom she was going to share all costs. O would be serving a
  dual purpose, both playing the role of the lover who supports, or helps
  to support, the girl he loves, and also the theoretically opposite role
  of providing a moral guarantee. René's presence was not official enough,
  really, to compromise the fiction. But who can say whether, behind
  Jacqueline's decision, that very presence might not have been the real
  motivation for her acceptance? The fact remained that it was left up to
  O, and to O alone, to present the matter to Jacqueline's mother. Never
  had O been more keenly aware of playing the role of traitor, of spy,
  never had she felt so keenly she was the envoy of some criminal
  organization as when she found herself in the presence of that woman,
  who thanked her for befriending her daughter. And at the same time, deep
  in her heart O was repudiating her mission and the reasons which had
  brought her there. Yes, Jacqueline would move in with her, but never,
  never would O acquiesce so completely to Sir Stephen as to deliver her
  into his hands. And yet! ... For no sooner had she moved into O's
  apartment, where she was assigned, at René's request, the bedroom he
  sometimes pretended to occupy (pretended, given that he always slept in
  O's big bed), than O, contrary to all expectations, was amazed to find
  herself obsessed with the burning desire to have Jacqueline at any
  price, even if attaining her goal meant handing her over to Sir Stephen.
  After all, she rationalized to herself, Jacqueline's beauty is quite
  sufficient protection for her, and besides, why should I get involved in
  it anyway? And what if she were to be reduced to what I have been
  reduced to, is that really so terrible? - scarcely admitting, and yet so
  overwhelmed to imagine, how sweet it would be to see Jacqueline naked
  and defenseless beside her, and like her.
  The week Jacqueline moved in, her mother having given her full consent,
  René proved to be exceedingly zealous, inviting them every other day to
  dinner and taking them to the movies which, curiously enough, he chose
  from among the detective pictures playing, tales of drug traffic and
  white slavery. He would sit down between them, gently hold hands with
  them both and not utter a word. But whenever there was a scene of
  violence, O would see him studying Jacqueline's face for the slightest
  trace of emotion. All you could see on it was a hint of disgust,
  revealed by the slight downward pout at the corners of her mouth.
  Afterward he would drive them home in his convertible, with the top
  down, and in the open car with the windows rolled down, the speed and
  the night wind flattened Jacqueline's generous head of blond hair
  against her cheeks and narrow forehead, and even blew it into her eyes.
  She would toss her head to smooth her hair back into place and would run
  her hand through it the way boys do.
  Once she had accepted the fact that she was living with O and that O was
  René's mistress, she consequently seemed to find René's little
  familiarities quite natural. It did not bother her in the least to have
  René come into her room under the pretense of looking for some piece of
  paper he had left there, and O knew that it was a pretense, for she had
  personally emptied the drawers of the big Dutch writing desk, with its
  elaborate pattern of inlay and its leather-lined leaf, which was always
  open, a desk so utterly unlike René. Why did he have it? Who had he
  gotten it from? Its weighty elegance, its light-colored woods were the
  only touch of wealth in the somewhat dark room which faced north and
  overlooked the courtyard and the steel gray of its walls and the cold,
  highly waxed surface of the floor provided a sharp contract with the
  cheerful rooms which faced the river. Well, there could be a virtue in
  that: Jacqueline would not be happy there. It would make it all the
  easier for her to agree to share the two front rooms with O, to sleep
  with O, as on the first day she had agreed to share the bathroom and
  kitchen, the cosmetics, the perfumes, the meals. In this, O was
  mistaken. Jacqueline was profoundly and passionately attached to
  anything that belonged to her - to her pink pearl, for instance - and
  completely indifferent to anything that was not hers. Had she lived in a
  palace, it would have interested her only if someone had told her: the
  palace is yours, and then proved it by giving her a notarized deed. She
  could not have cared less whether the gray room was pleasant or not, and
  it was not to get away from it that she climbed into O's bed. Nor was it
  to show her gratitude to O, for she in fact did not feel it, though O
  ascribed the feeling to her and was delighted to abuse it, or think she
  was abusing it. Jacqueline enjoyed pleasure, and found it both expedient
  and pleasant to receive it from a woman, in whose hands she was running
  no risk whatever.
  Five days after she had unpacked her suitcases, whose contents O had
  helped her sort out and put away, when for the third time René had
  brought them home about ten o'clock after having dined with them, and
  had then left (as he had both other times), she simply appeared, naked
  and still wet from her bath, in O's doorway and said to O:
  "You're sure he's not coming back?" and without even waiting for her
  answer, she slipped into the big bed. She allowed herself to be kissed
  and caressed, her eyes closed, not responding by a single caress; at
  first she moaned faintly, hardly more than a whimper, then louder, still
  louder, until finally she cried out. She fell asleep sprawled across the
  bed, her knees apart but her legs flat again on the bed, the upper part
  of her body slightly turned on one side, her hands open, her body bathed
  in the bright light of the pink lamp. Between her breasts a trace of
  sweat glistened. O covered her and turned out the light. When, two hours
  later, she took her again, in the dark, Jacqueline did not resist but
  murmured:
  "Don't wear me out completely, I have to get up early tomorrow."
  

  
  It was at this time that Jacqueline, in addition to her intermittent
  assignments as a model, began to engage in a more absorbing but equally
  unpredictable career: she was signed up to play bit parts in the movies.
  It was hard to tell whether she was proud of this or not, whether or not
  she considered this the first step in a career which might lead to her
  becoming famous. In the morning she would drag herself out of bed more
  in anger than with any show of enthusiasm, would take her shower,
  quickly make herself up, for breakfast would accept only the large cup
  of black coffee that O barely had time to make for her, and would let O
  kiss the tips of her fingers, responding with no more than a mechanical
  smile and an expression full of malice: O was soft and warm in her white
  vicuna dressing gown, her hair combed, her face washed, looking for all
  the world like someone who plans on going back to bed. And yet such was
  not the case. O had not yet found the courage to explain why to
  Jacqueline. The truth of the matter was that every day, when Jacqueline
  left for the film studio at Boulogne where her picture was being shot,
  at the same time as the children left for school and the white-collar
  workers for their offices, O, who in the past had indeed whiled away the
  morning in her apartment, also got dressed.
  "I'm sending you my car," Sir Stephen had said, "to drive Jacqueline to
  Boulogne, then it will come back to pick you up."
  Thus O found herself headed for Sir Stephen's place every morning when
  the sun along the way was still striking the eastern faces; the other
  walls were still cool in the shade, but in the gardens the shadows were
  already growing shorter.
  At the rue de Poitiers, the housework was still not finished. Norah, the
  mulatto maid, would take O into the small bedroom where, the first
  evening, Sir Stephen had left her alone to sleep and cry, wait till O
  had put her gloves, her bag, and her clothes on the bed, and then she
  would take them and put them away, in O's presence, in a closet to which
  she alone had the key. Then, having given O the patent-leather
  high-heeled mules which made a sharp clicking sound as she walked, Norah
  would precede her, opening the doors as they went, till they reached Sir
  Stephen's study, when she would stand aside to let O pass.
  O never got used to these preparations, and stripping in front of this
  patient old woman, who never said a word to her and scarcely looked at
  her, seemed to her as dangerous and formidable as being naked at Roissy
  in the presence of the valets there. On felt slippers, the old lady
  slipped silently by like a nun. As she followed her, O could not take
  her eyes off the twin points of her Madras kerchief and, every time she
  opened a door, off her thin, swarthy hand on the porcelain handle, a
  hand that seemed as hard as wood.
  At the same time, by a feeling diametrically opposed to the terror she
  inspired in her - a contradiction O was unable to explain - O
  experienced a kind of pride that this servant of Sir Stephen (and just
  what was her relation to Sir Stephen, and why had he entrusted her with
  this task as costume and make-up assistant for which she assumed so
  poorly suited?) was a witness to the fact that she too - like so many
  others, perhaps, whom she had guided in the same way, and why should she
  think otherwise? - was worthy of being used by Sir Stephen. For perhaps
  Sir Stephen did love her, without a doubt he did, and O sensed that the
  time was not far off when he would no longer be content to let her
  suspect it but would declare it to her - but to the very degree that his
  love and desire for her were increasing, he was becoming more
  completely, more minutely, and more deliberately exacting with her. Thus
  retained by his side for whole mornings, during which he sometimes
  scarcely touched her, waiting only to be caressed by her, she did
  whatever he wanted of her with a sentiment that must be qualified as
  gratitude, which was all the greater whenever his request took the form
  of a command. Each surrender was for her the pledge that another
  surrender would be demanded of her, and she acquitted herself of each as
  though of a duty performed; it was odd that she would have been
  completely satisfied by it, and yet she was.
  Sir Stephen's office, situated directly above the yellow and gray
  drawing room where he held sway in the evening, was smaller and had a
  lower ceiling. It contained neither settee nor sofa, only two regency
  armchairs upholstered in a tapestry with a floral pattern. O sat in one
  occasionally, but Sir Stephen generally preferred to keep her near at
  hand, at arm's length, and while he was busy with other things, to none
  the less have her seated on his desk, to his left. The desk was set at
  right angles to the wall, which allowed O to lean back against the
  shelves which contained some dictionaries and leather-bound phone books.
  The telephone was snug against her left thigh, and every time the phone
  rang she jumped it. It was she who picked up the receiver and answered,
  saying: "May I ask who's calling?" then either repeating the name out
  loud and passing the receiver to Sir Stephen, or, if he signaled to her,
  making some excuse for him. Whenever had a visitor, old Norah would
  announce him, Sir Stephen would have him wait long enough for Norah to
  conduct O back to the room where she had undressed and where, after Sir
  Stephen's visitor had left, she would come to fetch her again when Sir
  Stephen rang for her.
  Since Norah entered and left the study several times each morning,
  either to bring Sir Stephen his coffee or to bring in the mail, to open
  or draw the blinds or to empty the ashtrays, and since she alone had the
  right to enter and had been expressly instructed never to knock, and
  since, finally, she always waited in silence whenever she had something
  to say, until Sir Stephen spoke to her to ask her what it was she
  wanted, it so happened that on one occasion when Norah came into the
  room O was bent over the desk with her rear exposed, her head and arms
  against the leather top, waiting for Sir Stephen to impale her. She
  raised her head. If Norah had not glanced at her, and she invariably
  never did, that would have been the only movement O would have made. But
  this time it was obvious that Norah was trying to catch O's eye. Those
  black, beady eyes fastened on her own - and it was impossible for O to
  tell whether they bespoke indifference or not - those eyes set in a
  deeply furrowed, impassive face so bothered O that she made a movement
  to try and get away from Sir Stephen. He gathered what it was all about,
  and with one hand pinned her waist to the table, while prying her open
  with the other. She who was constantly striving to cooperate and do her
  best was now, quite involuntarily, tense and contracted, and Sir Stephen
  was obliged to force his way. Even when he had done so, she felt that
  the ring of her buttocks was tightening around him, and he had trouble
  forcing himself all the way into her. He withdrew only when he was
  certain he could come and go with ease. Then as he was on the point of
  taking her again, he told Norah to wait, and said that she could help O
  get dressed when he had finished with her. And yet, before he dismissed
  her, he kissed O tenderly on the mouth. It was that kiss which, several
  days later, gave her the courage to tell him that Norah frightened her.
  "I should hope so," he retorted. "And when you wear my mark and my
  irons, as I trust you soon will - if you will consent to it - you'll
  have much more reason to be afraid of her."
  "Why?" O asked, "and what mark and what irons? I'm already wearing this
  ring...."
  "That's completely up to Anne-Marie, to whom in fact I've promised to
  show you. We're going to pay her a visit after lunch. I trust you don't
  mind? She's a friend of mine, and you may have noted that, till now,
  I've refrained from ever introducing you to my friends. When Anne-Marie
  is finished with you, I'll give you genuine reasons for being afraid of
  Norah."
  O did not dare to pursue the matter any further. This Anne-Marie whom
  they had threatened her with intrigued her more than Norah. Sir Stephen
  had already mentioned her when they had lunched together at Saint-Cloud.
  And it was quite true that O knew none of Sir Stephen's friends, nor any
  of his acquaintances. In short, she was living in Paris, locked in her
  secret as though she had been locked in a brothel; the only persons who
  had the key to her secret, René and Sir Stephen, at the same time had
  the only key to her body. She could not help thinking that the
  expression "open oneself to someone," which meant to give oneself, for
  her had only this meaning, for she was in fact opening every part of her
  body which was capable of being opened. It also seemed to her that this
  was her raison d'etre and that Sir Stephen, like René, intended it
  should be, since whenever he spoke of his friends as he had done at
  Saint-Cloud, it was to tell her that those to whom he might introduce
  her would, needless to say, be free to dispose of her however they
  wished, if indeed they did. But in trying to visualize Anne-Marie and
  imagine what it might be that Sir Stephen expected from Anne-Marie as
  far as she, O, was concerned, O was completely at sea, and not even her
  experience at Roissy was of any help to her. Sir Stephen had also
  mentioned that he wanted to see her caress another woman: could that be
  it? (But he had specified that he was referring to Jacqueline....) No,
  it wasn't that. "To show you," he had just said. Indeed. But after she
  left Anne-Marie, O knew no more than before.
  

  
  Anne-Marie lived not far from the Observatoire in Paris, in an apartment
  flanked by a kind of large studio, on the top floor of a new building
  overlooking the treetops. She was a slender woman, the same age more or
  less as Sir Stephen, and her black hair was streaked with gray. Her eyes
  were such a deep blue they looked black. She offered O and Sir Stephen
  some coffee, a very strong bitter coffee which she served steaming hot
  in tiny cups, and which reassured O. When she had finished her coffee
  and got up from her chair to put down her empty cup on a coffee table,
  Anne-Marie seized her by the wrist and, turning to Sir Stephen, said:
  "May I?"
  "Please do," Sir Stephen said.
  Then Anne-Marie, who tell then had neither spoken to nor smiled at O,
  even to greet her or to acknowledge Sir Stephen's introduction, said to
  her softly, with a smile so tender one would have thought she were
  giving her a present:
  "Come, my child, and let me see your belly and backside, but better yet,
  why don't you take off all your clothes."
  While O obeyed, she lighted a cigarette. Sir Stephen had not taken his
  eyes off O. They left her standing there for perhaps five minutes. There
  was no mirror in the room, but O caught a vague reflection of herself in
  the black-lacquer surface of a screen.
  "Take off your stockings too," Anne-Marie said suddenly. "You see," she
  went on, "you shouldn't wear garters, you'll ruin your thighs." And with
  the tip of her finger she pointed to the spot just above O's knees where
  O rolled down her stockings around a wide elastic garter. There was in
  fact a faint mark on her leg.
  "Who told you to do that?"
  Before O had a chance to reply, Sir Stephen said:
  "The boy who gave her to me, you know him, René." And he added: "But I'm
  sure he'll come around to your opinion."
  "I'm glad to hear it," said Anne-Marie. "I'm going to give you some
  long, dark stockings, O, and a corset to hold them up. But it will be a
  whalebone corset, one that will be snug at the waist."
  When Anne-Marie had run a young blonde, silent girl had brought in some
  very sheer, black stockings and a tight-fitting corset of black nylon
  taffeta, reinforced and sustained by wide, close-set stays which curved
  in at the lower belly and above the hips. O, who was still standing,
  shifting her weight from one foot to the other, slipped on the
  stockings, which came to the top of her thighs. The young blonde helped
  her into the corset, which had a row of buckles along one of the busks
  on one side near the back. Like the bodices at Roissy, this one could be
  laced up as tightly or as loosely as desired, the laces being at the
  back. O fastened her stockings to the four garter-belt snaps in front
  and on the sides, then the girl set about lacing her up as tight as she
  could. O felt her waist and belly being pressed inward by the pressure
  of the stays, that in front descended almost to the pubis, which they
  left free, as they did her hips. The corset was shorter behind and left
  her rear completely free.
  "She'll be much improved," Anne-Marie said, speaking to Sir Stephen,
  "when her waist is a fraction of its present size. And what's more, if
  you're too pressed for time to have her undress, you'll see that the
  corset is no inconvenience. Now then, O, step over this way."
  The girl left: O went over to Anne-Marie, who was sitting in a low
  chair, a small easy chair upholstered in bright red velvet. Anne-Marie
  ran her hand lightly over her buttocks and then, toppling her over on an
  ottoman similar to the red velvet chair and ordering her not to move,
  seized both her nether lips.
  This is how they lift the fish at the market, O was thinking, by the
  gills, and how they pry open the mouths of horses. She also recalled
  that the valet Pierre, during her first evening at Roissy, had done the
  same to her after having fastened her in chains. After all, she was no
  longer mistress of her own fate, and that part of her of which she was
  least in control was most assuredly that half of her body which could,
  so to speak, be put to use independently of the rest. Why, each time
  that she realized this, as she - surprised was not really the right word
  - once again persuaded, why was she paralyzed each time by the same
  feeling of profound distress, a sentiment which tended to deliver her
  not so much into the hands of the person she was with as into the hands
  of him who had turned her over to alien hands, a sentiment which drew
  her closer to René when others were possessing her and which, here, was
  tending to draw her closer to whom? To René or to Sir Stephen? She no
  longer knew.... But that was because she did not want to know, for it
  was clear that she had belonged to Sir Stephen now for ... how long had
  it been? ...
  Anne-Marie had her stand up and put her clothes back on.
  "You can bring her to me whenever you like," she said to Sir Stephen.
  "I'll be at Samois (Samois... O had expected: Roissy. But if it did not
  mean Roissy; then what did it mean?) in two days time. That will be
  fine." (What would be fine?)
  "In ten days, if that suits you," Sir Stephen said, "at the beginning of
  July."
  In the car which was driving back home, Sir Stephen having remained
  behind at Anne-Marie's she remembered the statue she had seen as a child
  in the Luxembourg Gardens: a woman whose waist had been similarly
  constricted and seemed so slim between her full breasts and plump behind
  - she was leaning over limpid water, a spring which, like her, was
  carefully sculptured in marble, looking at her reflection - so slim and
  frail that she had been afraid the marble waist would snap. But if that
  was what Sir Stephen wanted...
  As for Jacqueline, she could handle her easily enough merely by telling
  her the corset was one of René's whims. Which brought O back to a train
  of thought she had been trying to avoid whenever it occurred to her, one
  which surprised her above all not to find more painful: why, since
  Jacqueline had moved in with her, had he made an effort not so much to
  leave her alone with Jacqueline, which she could understand, but to
  avoid being alone with O any more? July was fast approaching, and he
  would be going away and would not be coming to visit her at this
  Anne-Marie's where Sir Stephen was sending her; must she therefore
  resign herself to the fact that the only times she would see him would
  be those evenings when he was in the mood to invite Jacqueline and her,
  or - and she didn't know which of the two possibilities upset her most
  (since between them, at this point, there was something basically false,
  due to the fact that their relationship was so circumscribed) - on those
  occasional mornings when she was at Sir Stephen's and Norah ushered René
  in, after having announced his arrival? Sir Stephen always received him,
  invariably René kissed O, caressed the tips of her breasts, coordinated
  his plans with Sir Stephen for the following day - plans which never
  included O - and left. Had he given her to Sir Stephen so completely
  that he had ceased to love her? The thought threw O into such a state of
  panic that, mechanically, she got out of Sir Stephen's car in front of
  her house, instead of telling the chauffeur to wait, and after it had
  pulled away she had to dash off in search of a taxi. Taxis are few and
  far between on the quai de Bethune. O had to run all the way to the
  boulevard Saint-Germain, and still she had to wait. She was all out of
  breath, and in a sweat, because her corset made it hard for her to
  breathe, when a taxi finally slowed down at the corner of the rue
  Cardinal-Lemoine. She signaled to it, gave the driver the address of
  René's office, got in without knowing whether René would be there, and
  if he was, whether he would see her; it was the first time she had gone
  to his office.
  She was not surprised by the impressive building on a side street just
  off the Champs-Elysées, or by the American-style offices, but what did
  disconcert her was René's attitude, although he did receive her
  immediately. Not that he was aggressive or full of reproaches. She would
  have preferred reproaches, for he had never given her permission to come
  and disturb him at his office, and it was possible that she was creating
  a considerable disturbance for him. He dismissed his secretary, told her
  that he did not want to see anyone, and asked her to hold all calls.
  Then he asked O what was the matter.
  "I was afraid you didn't love me any longer," O said.
  He laughed. "All of a sudden, just like that?"
  "Yes, in the car coming back from..."
  "Coming back from where?"
  O remained silent.
  René laughed again:
  "But I know where you were, silly. Coming back from Anne-Marie's. And in
  ten days you're going to Samois. Sir Stephen just talked to me on the
  phone."
  René was seated in the only comfortable chain in the office, which was
  facing the table, and O had buried herself in his arms.
  "They can do whatever they want with me, I don't care," she murmured.
  "But tell me you still love me."
  "Of course I love you, darling," René said, "but I want you to obey me,
  and I'm afraid you're not doing a very good job of it. Did you tell
  Jacqueline that you belonged to Sir Stephen, did you talk to her about
  Roissy?"
  O assured him that she had not. Jacqueline acquiesced to her caresses,
  but the day she should learn that O...
  René stopped her from completing her sentence, lifted her up and laid
  her down in the chair where he had just been sitting, and bunched up her
  skirt.
  "Ah ha, so you have your corset," he said. "It's true that you'll be
  much more attractive when you have a smaller waistline."
  Then he took her, and it seemed to O that it had been so long since he
  had that, subconsciously, she realized she had begun to doubt whether he
  really desired her any longer, and in his act she saw proof of love.
  "You know," he said afterward, "you're foolish not to talk to
  Jacqueline. We absolutely need her at Roissy, and the simplest way of
  getting her there would be through you. Besides, when you come back from
  Anne-Marie's there won't be any way of concealing your true conditioning
  any longer."
  O wanted to know why.
  "You'll see," René went on. "You still have five days, and only five
  days, because Sir Stephen intends to start whipping you again daily,
  five days before he sends you to Anne-Marie's and there will be no way
  for you to hide the marks. How will you ever explain them to
  Jacqueline?"
  O did not reply. What René did not know was that Jacqueline was
  completely egotistical as far as O was concerned, being interested in
  her solely because of O's manifest, and passionate, interest in her, and
  she never looked at O. If O were covered with welts from the floggings,
  all she would have to do would be to take care not to bathe in
  Jacqueline's presence, and to wear a nightgown. Jacqueline would never
  notice a thing. She had never noticed that O did not wear panties, and
  there was no danger she would notice anything else: the fact was that O
  did not interest her.
  "Listen to me," René went on, "there's one thing anyway I want you to
  tell her, and tell her right away, and that is that I'm in love with
  her."
  "Is that true?" O said.
  "I want her," René said, "and since you can't - or won't - do anything
  about it, I'll take charge of the matter myself and do what has to be
  done."
  "You'll never get her to agree to go to Roissy," O said.
  "I won't? In that case," René retorted, "we'll force her to."
  That night, after dark, when Jacqueline was in bed and O had pulled the
  covers back to gaze at her in the light of the lamp, after having said
  to her: "René's in love with you, you know" - for she had delivered the
  message and delivered it without delay - O, who a month before had been
  horrified at the idea of seeing this delicate wisp of a body scored by
  the lash, these narrow loins quartered, the pure mouth screaming, and
  the far down on her cheeks streaked with tear, O now repeated to herself
  René's final words and was happy.
  

  
  With Jacqueline gone and not due back until beginning of August, if they
  had finished shooting the film she was making, there was nothing further
  to keep O in Paris. July was around the corner, all the gardens in Paris
  were bursting with crimson geraniums, at noon all the shutters in town
  were closed, and René was complaining that he would have to make a trip
  to Scotland. For a moment O was hoping that he would take her along. But
  apart from the fact that he never took her anywhere to see his family,
  she knew that he would surrender her to Sir Stephen, if he were to ask
  for her.
  Sir Stephen announced that he would come for her the same day that René
  was flying to London. She was on vacation.
  "We're going down to Anne-Marie's," he said, "she's expecting you. Don't
  bother packing a suitcase, you won't need anything."
  Their destination was not the apartment near the Observatoire where O
  had first met Anne-Marie, but a low-lying two-story house at the end of
  a large garden, on the edge of the Fontanebleau Forest. Since that first
  day, O had been wearing the whalebone corset that Anne-Marie had deemed
  so essential: each day she had tightened it a little more, until now her
  waist was scarcely larger than the circle formed by her ten fingers.;
  Anne-Marie ought to be pleased.
  When they arrived it was two o'clock in the afternoon, the whole house
  was asleep, and the dog barked faintly when they rang the bell: a big,
  shaggy, sheepdog that sniffed at O's knees beneath her skirt. Anne-Marie
  was sitting under a copper beech tree on the edge of the lawn which , in
  one corner of the garden, faced the windows of her bedroom. She did not
  get up.
  "Her's O," Sir Stephen said. "You know what has to be done with her.
  When will she be ready?"
  Anne-Marie glanced at O. "You mean you haven't told her? All right, I'll
  begin immediately. You should probably allow ten days after it's over. I
  imagine you'll want to put the rings and monogram on yourself? Come back
  in two weeks. The whole business should be finished in two weeks after
  that."
  O started to ask a question.
  "Just a minute, O," Anne-Marie said, "go into the front bedroom over
  there, get undressed but keep your sandals on, and come back."
  The room, a large white bedroom with heavy purple Jouy print drapes, was
  empty. O put her bag, her gloves, and her clothes on a small chair near
  a closet door. There was no mirror. She went back outside and, dazzled
  by the bright sunlight, walked slowly back over in the shade of the
  beech tree. Sir Stephen was still standing in front of Anne-Marie, the
  dog at his feet. Anne-Marie's black hair, streaked with gray, shone as
  though she had used some kind of cream on it, her blue eyes seemed
  black. She was dressed in white, with a patent-leather belt around her
  waist, and she was wearing patent-leather sandals which revealed the
  bright red nail polish on the toenails of her bare feet, the same color
  polish she was wearing on her fingernails.
  "O," she said, "kneel down in front of Sir Stephen."
  O obliged, her arms crossed behind her back, the tips of her breasts
  quivering. The dog tensed, as though he were about to spring at her.
  "Down, Turk," Anne-Marie ordered. Then: "Do you consent, O, to bear the
  rings and monogram with which Sir Stephen desires you to be marked,
  without knowing how they will be placed upon you?"
  "I do," O said.
  "All right then, I'm going to walk Sir Stephen to his car. Stay here."
  As Anne-Marie got up from her chaise lounge, Sir Stephen bent down and
  took O's breasts in his hands. He kissed her on the mouth and murmured:
  "Are you mine, O, are you really mine?" then turned and left her, to
  follow Anne-Marie. The gate banged shut, Anne-Marie was coming back. O,
  her legs folded beneath her, was sitting on her heels and had her arms
  on her knees, like an Egyptian statue.
  There were three other girls living in the house, all of whom had a
  bedroom on the second floor. O was given a small bedroom on the ground
  floor, adjoining Anne-Marie's. Anne-Marie called up to them to come down
  into the garden. Like O, all three of them were naked. The only persons
  in this gynaeceum - which was carefully concealed by the high walls and
  by closed shutters over the windows which overlooked a narrow dirt road
  - the only persons who wore clothes were Anne-Marie and the three
  servants: a cook and two maids, all of whom were older than Anne-Marie,
  three severe, dour women in their black alpaca skirts and stiffly
  starched aprons.
  "Her name is O," said Anne-Marie, who had sat down again. "Bring her
  over to me so I can get a better look at her." Two of the girls helped O
  to her feet: they were both brunettes, their hair as dark as their
  fleece below, and the nipples of their breasts were large and dark,
  almost purple. The other girl was a short, plump redhead, and the chalky
  skin of her bosom was crisscrossed by a terrifying network of green
  veins. The two girls pushed O till she was right next to Anne-Marie, who
  pointed to the three black stripes that showed on the front of her
  thighs and were repeated on her buttocks.
  "Who whipped you?" she asked. "Sir Stephen?"
  "Yes," O said.
  "When? And with what?"
  "Three days ago, with a riding crop."
  "Starting tomorrow, and for a month thereafter, you will not be whipped.
  But today you will, to mark your arrival, as soon as I've had a chance
  to examine you. Has Sir Stephen ever whipped you on the inside of your
  thighs, with your legs spread wide? No? It's true, men don't know how
  to. Well, we'll soon see. Show me your waist. Yes, it's much better!"
  Anne-Marie pressed O's waist to make it even more wasplike. Then she
  sent the redhead to fetch another corset and had them put it on her. It
  was also made of black nylon, but it was so stiffly whaleboned and so
  narrow that it looked for all the world like an extremely wide belt. It
  had no garter straps. One of the girls laced it up as tight as she
  could, with Anne-Marie lending her encouragement as she pulled on the
  laces as hard as she could.
  "This is dreadful," O said. "I don't know whether I can bear it."
  "That's the whole point," Anne-Marie said. "You're much, much lovelier
  than you were, but the problem was you didn't lace it tight enough.
  You're going to wear it this way every day. But tell me now, how did Sir
  Stephen prefer using you? I need to know."
  She had seized O's womb with her whole hand, and O could not reply. Two
  of the girls were seated on the lawn, the third, one of the brunettes,
  was seated on the foot of Anne-Marie's chaise lounge.
  "Turn her around for me, girls, so I can see her back," Anne-Marie said.
  
  She was turned around and bent over, and the hands of both girls vented
  her.
  "Of course," Anne-Marie went on, "there was no need for you to tell me.
  You'll have to be marked on the rear. Stand up. We're going to put on
  your bracelets. Colette, go get the box, and we'll draw lots to see who
  will whip you. Bring the tokens, Colette, then we'll go to the music
  room."
  Colette was the taller of the two dark-haired girls, the other's name
  was Claire; the short redhead was named Yvonne. O had not noticed till
  now that they were all wearing, as at Roissy, a leather collar and
  leather bracelets on their wrists. They were also wearing similar
  bracelets around their ankles.
  When Yvonne had chosen some bracelets that fit O and put them on her,
  Anne-Marie handed O four tokens and asked her to give one to each of the
  girls, without looking at the numbers on them. O handed out the tokens,
  the three girls each looked at theirs but said nothing, waiting for
  Anne-Marie to speak.
  "I have number two," Anne-Marie said. "Who has number one?"
  Colette had number one.
  "All right, take O away, she's all yours."
  Colette seized O's arms and joined her hands behind her back; she
  fastened the bracelets together and pushed O ahead of her. On the
  threshold of a French door that opened into a small wing which formed an
  L with the front of the house, Yvonne, who was leading the way, removed
  her sandals. The light entering through the French door revealed a room
  the far end of which formed a kind of raised rotunda; the ceiling, in
  the shape of a shallow cupola, was supported by two narrow columns set
  about six feet apart. This dais was about four steps high and, in the
  area between the columns, projected further into the room in a gentle
  arc. The floor of the rotunda, like that of the rest of the room, was
  covered with a red felt carpet. The walls were white, the curtains on
  the windows red, and the sofas set in a semicircle facing the rotunda
  were upholstered in the same red felt material as the carpet on the
  floor. In the rectangular portion of the room there was a fireplace
  which was wider than it was deep, and opposite the fireplace a large
  console-type combination record player and radio, with shelves of
  records on both sides. This was why it was called the music room, which
  communicated directly with Anne-Marie's bedroom via a door near the
  fireplace. The identical door on the other side of the fireplace opened
  into a closet. Aside from the record player and the sofas, the room had
  no furniture.
  While Colette had O sit down on the edge of the platform, which in this
  center portion between the columns made a vertical drop to the floor -
  the steps having been placed to the left and right of the columns - the
  two other girls, after first having closed the venetian blinds a trifle,
  shut the French door. O was surprised to note that it was a double door,
  and Anne-Marie, who was laughing said:
  "That's so no one can hear you scream. And the walls are lined with
  cork. Don't worry, no one can hear the slightest thing that goes on in
  here. Now lie down."
  She took her by both shoulders and laid her back, then pulled her
  slightly forward. O's hands were clutching the edge of the platform -
  Yvonne having attached them to a ring set in the platform - and her
  buttocks were thus suspended in mid-air. Anne-Marie made her raise her
  legs toward her chest, then O suddenly felt her legs, still doubled-up
  above her, being pulled taut in the same direction: straps had been
  fastened to her ankle bracelets and thence to the columns on either
  side, while she lay thus between them on this raised dais exposed in
  such a way that the only part of her which was visible was the double
  cleft of her womb and her buttocks violently quartered. Anne-Marie
  caressed the inside of her thighs.
  "It's the most tender spot of the whole body," she said, "be careful not
  to harm it. Not too hard now, Colette."
  Colette was standing over her, astride her at the level of her waist,
  and in the bridge formed by her dark legs, O could see the tassels of
  the whip she was holding in her hand. As the first blows burned into her
  loins, O moaned. Colette alternated from left to right, paused, then
  started again. O struggled with all her might, she thought the straps
  would tear her limb from limb. She did not want to grovel, she did not
  want to beg for mercy. And yet, that was precisely what Anne-Marie
  intended wringing from her lips.
  "Faster," she said to Colette, "and harder."
  O braced herself, but it was no use. A minute later she could bear it no
  more, she screamed and burst into tears, while Anne-Marie caressed her
  face.
  "Just a second longer," she said, "and it will be over. Only five more
  minutes. She can scream for five minutes. It's twenty-five past,
  Colette. Stop when it's half past, when I tell you to."
  But O was screaming:
  "No, no, for God's sake don't!" screaming that she couldn't bear it, no,
  she couldn't bear the torture another second. And yet she endured it to
  the bitter end, and after Colette had left the little stage, Anne-Marie
  smiled at her.
  "Thank me," she said to O, and O thanked her.
  She knew very well why Anne-Marie had wanted, above all else, to have
  her whipped. That the female of the species was as cruel as, and more
  implacable than, the male, O had never doubted for a minute. But O
  suspected that Anne-Marie was less interested in making a spectacle of
  her power than she was in establishing between O and herself a sense of
  complicity. O had never really understood, but she had finally come to
  accept as an undeniable and important verity, this constant and
  contradictory jumble of her emotions: she liked the idea of torture, but
  when she was being tortured herself she would have betrayed the whole
  world to escape it, and yet when it was over she was happy to have gone
  through it, happier still if it had been especially cruel and prolonged.
  Anne-Marie had been correct in her assumptions both as to O's
  acquiescence and as to her revolt, and knew that her pleas for mercy
  were indeed genuine. There was still a third reason for what she had
  done, which she explained to O. She was bent on proving to every girl
  who came into her house, and who was fated to live in a totally feminine
  universe, that her condition as a woman should not be minimized or
  denigrated by the fact that she was in contact only with other women,
  but that, on the contrary, it should be heightened and intensified. That
  was why she required that the girls be constantly naked; the way in
  which O was flogged, as well as the position in which she was bound, had
  no other purpose. Today it was O who would remain for the rest of the
  afternoon - for three more hours - exposed on the dais, her legs raised
  and spread. Tomorrow it would be Claire, or Colette, or Yvonne, whom O
  would contemplate in tun. It was a technique much too slow and
  meticulous (as was the way the whip was wielded) to be used at Roissy.
  But O would see how efficient it was. Apart from the rings and the
  letters she would wear when she left, she would be returned to Sir
  Stephen more open, and more profoundly enslaved, than she had ever
  before thought possible.
  

  
  The following morning, after breakfast, Anne-Marie told O and Yvonne to
  follow her into the bedroom. From her writing desk she took a green
  leather coffer which she set on the bed and proceeded to open. Both
  girls squatted on their heels.
  "Hasn't Yvonne said anything to you about this?" Anne-Marie asked O.
  O shook her head. What was there for Yvonne to tell her?
  "And I know Sir Stephen didn't either. No matter. Anyway, here are the
  rings he wants you to wear."
  The rings were of stainless steel, unburnished, the same dull finish as
  the gold-plated iron ring. They were oblong in shape, similar to the
  links of a heavy chain, the rounded metal being approximately as thick
  as the diameter of an oversized coloring pencil. Anne-Marie showed O
  that each ring was composed of two U-shaped halves, one of which fitted
  into the other.
  "This is only the test model," she said, "which can be removed after
  it's been inserted. The permanent model, you see, has a spring inside,
  and when you press on it, it locks into the female slot of the other
  half of the ring and cannot be removed, except by filing."
  Each ring was as long as two joints of the little finger and wide enough
  for the same little finger to slip through it. To each ring was
  suspended, like another ring, or as though to the supporting loop of an
  earring, a ring which was meant to hang parallel to the plane of the ear
  and form its extension, a round disk made of the same metal, whose
  diameter was the same size as the ring was long. On one of its faces, a
  triskelion in gold inlay; on the opposite face, nothing.
  "On the blank side will be your name, your title, and Sir Stephen's
  family and given names," Anne-Marie said, "with below it, a design
  composed of a crossed whip and riding crop. Yvonne is wearing a disk
  just like it on her necklace, but yours will be worn on your loins."
  "But...," O ventured.
  "I know," Anne-Marie replied, "that's why I brought Yvonne along. Show
  yours, Yvonne."
  The red-haired girl rose to her feet and lay back on the bed. Anne-Marie
  spread her thighs and showed O that one of the nether lobes had been
  neatly pierced, half way down and close to the base. The iron ring would
  just fit into it.
  "In a moment I'll pierce you, O," Anne-Marie said. "It's nothing really.
  What takes the longest is placing the clamps so as to be able to suture
  the outer and inner layers, attach the epidermis to the inner membrane.
  It's much easier to bear than the whip."
  "You mean to say you won't put me to sleep?" O cried, trembling.
  "Of course not," Anne-Marie replied. "You'll merely be tied a little
  more tightly than you were yesterday. That's really quite sufficient.
  Now come long."
  A week later, Anne-Marie removed the clamps and slipped on the test
  ring. It was lighter than it looked, for it was hollow, but still O
  could feel its weight. The hard metal, which was visibly piercing the
  flesh, looked like an instrument of torture. What would it be like when
  the weight of the second ring was added to it? This barbaric instrument
  would be immediately and glaringly apparent to the most casual glance.
  "Of course it will," Anne-Marie said, when O pointed this out to her.
  "But aren't you by now fully aware of what Sir Stephen wants? Anyone at
  Roissy or anywhere else, Sir Stephen or anyone else, even you in front
  of the mirror, anyone who lifts your skirts will immediately see his
  rings on your loins and, if you turn around, his monogram on your
  buttocks. You may possibly file the rings off one day, but the grand on
  your backside will never come off."
  "I thought it was possible to have tattoos removed," Colette said. (It
  was she who had tattooed, on Yvonne's white skin just above the triangle
  of her belly, the initials of Yvonne's master in ornate blue letters,
  like the letters you find on embroidery.)
  "O will not be tattooed," replied Anne-Marie.
  O looked at Anne-Marie. Colette and Yvonne were stunned, and said
  nothing. Anne-Marie was fumbling for her words.
  "Go ahead and say it," O said.
  "My poor dear girl, I just couldn't work up the courage to tell you:
  you're to be branded. Sir Stephen sent me the branding irons two days
  ago."
  "Branded?" Yvonne cried, "with a red-hot branding iron?"
  from the first day, O had shared in the life of the house. Idleness,
  absolute and deliberate idleness was the order of the day, interspersed
  with dull distractions. The girls were at liberty to walk in the garden,
  to read, draw, play cards, play solitaire. They could sleep in their
  rooms or sunbathe on the lawn. Sometimes two of them would chat, or they
  would talk together in pairs for hours on end, and sometimes they would
  sit at Anne-Marie's feet without uttering a word. Mealtimes were always
  the same, dinner was by candlelight, tea was served in the garden, and
  there was something absurd about the matter-of-fact way in which the two
  servants served these naked girls seated around a festive table.
  In the evening, Anne-Marie would designate one of them to sleep with
  her, sometimes the same one several nights in succession. She caressed
  her chosen partner and was by her caressed, generally toward dawn, and
  then she would immediately fall asleep, after having sent her partner
  back to her own room. The purple drapes, only half closed, tinted the
  dawning day mauve, and Yvonne used to say that Anne-Marie was as
  beautiful and haughty in receiving pleasure as she was unstinting in her
  demands. None of them had ever seen her naked. She would pull up or open
  slightly her white nightgown, but would not take it off. Neither the
  pleasure she may have tasted the previous night before nor her choice of
  partner the previous evening had the least influence on her decision the
  following afternoon, which was always determined by a drawing. At three
  in the afternoon, beneath the copper beech where the garden chairs were
  grouped about a round, white-marble table, Anne-Marie would bring out
  the token box. Each girl would take a token. Whoever drew the lowest
  number was then taken to the music room and arranged on the dais as O
  had been that first day. She then had to point to (save for O, who was
  exempted until her departure) Anne-Marie's right or left hand, in each
  of which she was holding a white or black ball. If she chose black, she
  was flogged; white, she was not. Anne-Marie never resorted to chicanery,
  even if chance condemned or spared the same girl several days in a row.
  Thus the torture of little Yvonne, who sobbed and cried out for her
  lover, was repeated four days running. Her thighs, like her breasts
  crisscrossed with a green network of veins, spread to reveal a pink
  flesh which was pierced by the thick iron ring, which had finally been
  inserted, and the spectacle was all the more striking because Yvonne was
  completely shaved.
  "But why?" O wanted to know, "and why the ring if you are already
  wearing a disk on your collar?"
  "He says I'm more naked when I'm shaved. The ring, I think the ring is
  to fasten me with."
  Yvonne's green eyes and her tiny triangular face reminded O of
  Jacqueline every time she looked at her. What if Jacqueline were to go
  to Roissy? Sooner or later, Jacqueline would end up here, would here be
  strapped on her back on this platform.
  "I won't," O would say, "I don't want to and I won't lift a finger to
  get her there. As it is, I've already said too much. Jacqueline's not
  the sort to be flogged and marked."
  But how admirably suited to blows and irons was little Yvonne how lovely
  it was to hear her moans and sighs, how lovely too to witness her body
  soaked with perspiration, and what a pleasure to wrest the moans and the
  sweat from her. For on two occasions Anne-Marie had handed O the thonged
  whip - both times the victim had been Yvonne - and told her to use it.
  The first time, for the first minute, she had hesitated, and at Yvonne's
  first scream, O had recoiled and cringed, but as soon as she had started
  in again and Yvonne's cries had echoed anew, she had been overwhelmed
  with a terrible feeling of pleasure, a feeling so intense that she had
  caught herself laughing in spite of herself, and she had found it almost
  impossible to restrain herself from striking Yvonne as hard as she
  could. Afterward she had remained next to Yvonne throughout the entire
  period of time she was kept tied up, embracing her from time to time. In
  some ways, she probably resembled Yvonne. At least one was led to
  suspect as much by the way Anne-Marie felt about them both. Was it O's
  silence, her meekness that endeared her to Anne-Marie? Scarcely had O's
  wounds healed than Anne-Marie remarked:
  "How I regret not to be able to whip you!... When you come back... But
  let's say no more about it. In any event, I'm going to open you every
  day."
  And, daily, when the girl who was in the music room had been untied, O
  would replace her until the bell rang for dinner. And Anne-Marie was
  right: it was true that during those two hours all she could think of
  was the fact that she was opened, and of the ring, hanging heavily from
  her (after one had been placed there) which, after they had inserted the
  second ring, weighed even more. She could think of nothing save her
  enslaved condition, and of the marks that went with it.
  One evening Claire had come in with Colette from the garden, come over
  to O and examined both sides of the rings.
  "When you went to Roissy," she said, "was it Anne-Marie who brought you
  there?"
  "No," O said.
  "It was Anne-Marie who brought me, two years ago. I'm going back there
  day after tomorrow."
  "But don't you belong to anyone?" O said.
  "Claire belongs to me," said Anne-Marie, appearing from nowhere. "Your
  master's arriving tomorrow, O. Tonight you'll sleep with me."
  The short summer night waxed slowly brighter until, toward four o'clock,
  daylight drowned the last stars. O, who was sleeping with her legs
  together, was awakened by Anne-Marie's hands probing between her thighs.
  But all Anne-Marie wanted was to awaken O, to have O caress her. Her
  eyes were shining in the half light, and her black hair, with the
  streaks of gray interspersed, was pushed up behind her on the pillow:
  only slightly curly, and cut quite short, it made her look like some
  mighty nobleman in exile, like some brave libertine. With her lips, O
  brushed the hard tips of her breasts, and her hand ran lightly over the
  valley of her belly. Anne-Marie was quick to yield - but not to O. The
  pleasure to which she opened her eyes wide, staring at the growing
  daylight, was an anonymous, impersonal pleasure of which O was merely
  the instrument. It made no difference whatever to Anne-Marie that O
  admired her face, smooth and glowing with renewed youth, her lovely
  panting lips, nor did she care whether O heard her moan when her lips
  and teeth seized the crest of flesh hidden in the furrow of her belly.
  She merely seized O by the hair to press her more closely to her, and
  only let her go in order to say to her:
  "Again, do it again."
  O had loved Jacqueline in the same way, had held her completely
  abandoned in her arms. She had possessed her; or at least she so
  thought. But the similarity of gestures meant nothing. O did not possess
  Anne-Marie. No one possessed Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie demanded caresses
  without worrying about what the person providing them might feel, and
  she surrendered herself with an arrogant liberty. Yet she was all
  kindness and gentleness with O, kissed her on the mouth and kissed her
  breasts, and held her close against her for an hour before sending her
  back to her own room. She had removed her irons.
  "These are your final hours here," she said, "you can sleep without the
  irons. The ones we'll put on you in a little while you'll never be able
  to take off."
  She had run her hand softly, and at great length, over O's rear, then
  had taken her into the room where she, Anne-Marie, dressed, the only
  room in the house where there was a three-sided mirror. She had opened
  the mirror so that O could see herself.
  "This is the last time you'll see yourself intact," she said. "Here, on
  this smooth rounded area is where Sir Stephen's initials will be
  branded, on either side of the cleft in your behind. The day before you
  leave I'll bring you back here for another look at yourself. You won't
  recognize yourself. But Sir Stephen is right. Now go and get some sleep,
  O."
  But O was too worried and upset to sleep, and when at ten the next
  morning Yvonne came to fetch her, O was trembling so that she had to
  help her bathe, arrange her hair, and put on her lipstick. She had heard
  the garden gate open; Sir Stephen was there.
  "Come along now, O," Yvonne said, "he's waiting for you."
  The sun was already high in the sky, not a breath of air was stirring in
  the leave of the beech tree, which looked as though it were made out of
  copper. The dog, overcome by the heat, was lying at the foot of the
  tree, and since the sun had not yet disappeared behind the main mass of
  foliage, its rays shot through the end of the only branch which, at this
  hour, cast a shadow on the table: the marble top was resplendent with
  bright, warm spots of light.
  Sir Stephen was standing, motionless, beside the table, Anne-Marie
  seated beside him.
  "Here she is," said Anne-Marie, when Yvonne had brought O before them,
  "the rings can be put on whenever you like, she's been pierced."
  Without replying, Sir Stephen took O in his arms, kissed her on the
  mouth and, lifting her completely off her feet, lay her down on the
  table and bent over her. Then he kissed her again, caressed her eyebrows
  and her hair and, straightening up, said to Anne-Marie:
  "Right now, if it's all right with you."
  Anne-Marie took the leather coffer which she had brought out with her
  and set down on a chair, and handed Sir Stephen the rings, which were
  unhooked, and on which were inscribed the names of O and Sir Stephen.
  "Any time," Sir Stephen said.
  Yvonne lifted O's knees, and O felt the cold metal as Anne-Marie slipped
  it into place. As she was slipping the second half of the ring into the
  first, she was careful to see that the side inlaid with gold was against
  her thigh, and the side which bore the inscription facing inward. But
  the spring was so tight that the prongs would not go in all the way.
  They had to send Yvonne to fetch the hammer. Then they made O sit up and
  lean over, with her legs spread, on the edge of the marble slab, which
  served as an anvil first for the one, then the other of the two links of
  the chain, while they hit the other end of the hammer to drive the
  prongs home. Sir Stephen looked on in silence. When it was over, he
  thanked Anne-Marie and helped O to her feet. It was then she realized
  that these new irons were much heavier than the ones she had been
  wearing temporarily for the past few days. But these were permanent.
  "And now your monogram, right?" Anne-Marie said to Sir Stephen.
  Sir Stephen nodded assent, and held O by the waist, for she was
  stumbling and looked as though she might fall. She was not wearing her
  black corset, but it had so molded her into the desired shape that she
  looked as though she might break, so slim was her waistline now. And, as
  a result, her hips and breasts seemed fuller.
  In the music room, into which Sir Stephen carried rather than led O,
  Colette and Claire were seated at the foot of the stage. When the others
  came in, they both got to their feet. On the stage was a big, round
  single-burner stove. Anne-Marie took the straps from the closet and had
  them tie O tightly around the waist and knees, her belly hard against
  one of the columns. They also bound her hands and feet. Consumed by fear
  and terror, O felt one of Anne-Marie's hands on her buttocks, indicating
  the exact spot for the irons, she heard the hiss of a flame and, in
  total silence, heard the windows being closed. She could not have turned
  her head and looked, but she did not have the strength to. One single,
  frightful stab of pain coursed through her, made her go rigid in the
  bonds and wrenched a scream from her lips, and she never knew who it was
  who had, with both branding irons at once, seared the flesh of her
  buttocks, nor whose voice had counted slowly up to five, nor whose hand
  had given the signal to withdraw the irons.
  When they unfastened her, she collapsed into Anne-Marie's arms and had
  time, before everything turned black around her and she completely lost
  consciousness, to catch a glimpse, between two waves of darkness, of Sir
  Stephen's ghastly pale face.
  Ten days before the end of July, Sir Stephen drove O back to Paris. The
  irons attached to the left lobe of her belly cleft, proclaiming in bold
  letters that she was Sir Stephen's personal property, came about a third
  of the way down her thigh and, at every step, swung back and forth
  between her legs like the clapper of a bell, the inscribed disk being
  heavier and longer than the ring to which it was attached. The marks
  made by the branding iron, about three inches in height and half that in
  width, had been burned into the flesh as though by a gouging tool, and
  were almost half an inch deep: the lightest stroke of the finger
  revealed them. From these irons and these marks, O derived a feeling of
  inordinate pride. Had Jacqueline been there, instead of trying to
  conceal from her the fact that she bore them, as she had tried to hide
  the traces of the welts raised by the riding crop which Sir Stephen had
  wielded during those last days before her departure, she would have gone
  running in search of Jacqueline, to show them to her. But Jacqueline was
  not due back for another week. René wasn't there. During that week, O,
  at Sir Stephen's behest, had several summer dresses made, and a number
  of evening gowns of a very light material. He allowed her only two
  models, but let her order variations on both: one with a zipper all the
  way down the front (O already had several like it), the other a full
  skirt, easy to lift, always with a corselet above, which came up to
  below the breasts and was worn with a high-necked bolero. All one had to
  do was remove the bolero and the shoulders and breasts were bare, or
  simply to open it if one desired to see the breasts. Bathing suits, of
  course, were out of the question; the nether irons would hang below the
  suit. Sir Stephen had told her that this summer she would have to swim
  naked whenever she went swimming. Beach slacks were also out. However,
  Anne-Marie, who was responsible for the two basic models of dresses,
  knowing where Sir Stephen's preference lay in using O, had proposed a
  type of slacks which would be supported in front by the blouse and, on
  both sides, have long zippers, thus allowing the back flap to be lowered
  without taking off the slacks. But Sir Stephen refused. It was true that
  he used O, when he did not have recourse to her mouth, almost invariably
  as he would have a boy. But O had had ample opportunity to notice that
  when she was near him, even when he did not particularly desire her, he
  loved to take hold of and tug at her fleece with his hand, to pry her
  open and burrow at length within. The pleasure O derived from holding
  Jacqueline in much the same way, moist and burning between her locked
  fingers, was ample evidence and a guarantee of Sir Stephen's pleasure.
  She understood why he did not want any extraneous obstacles set in the
  path of that pleasure.
  Hatless, wearing practically no make-up, her hair completely free, O
  looked like a well-brought-up little girl, dressed as she was in her
  twirled stripe or polka dot, navy blue-and-white or gray-and-white
  pleated sun-skirts and the fitted bolero buttoned at the neck, or in her
  more conservative dresses of black nylon. Everywhere Sir Stephen
  escorted her she was taken for his daughter, or his niece, and this
  mistake was abetted by the fact that he, in addressing her, employed the
  tu form, wheras she employed the vous. Alone together in Paris,
  strolling through the streets to window shop, or walking along the
  quays, where the paving stones were dusty because the weather had been
  so dry, they evinced no surprise at seeing the passers-by smile at them,
  the way people smile at people who are happy.
  Once in a while Sir Stephen would push her into the recess of a
  porte-cochere, or beneath the archway of a building, which was always
  slightly dark and from which there rose the musty odor of ancient
  cellars, and he would kiss her and tell her he loved her. O would hook
  her heels over the sill of the porte-cochere out of which the regular
  pedestrian door had been cut. They caught a glimpse of a courtyard in
  the rear, with lines of laundry drying in the windows. Leaning on one of
  the balconies, a blonde girl would be staring fixedly at them. A cat
  would slip between their legs. Thus did they stroll through the Gobeline
  district, by Saint-Marcel, along the rue Mouffetard, to the area known
  as the Temple, and to the Bastille.
  Once Sir Stephen suddenly steered O into a wretched brothel-like hotel,
  where the desk clerk first wanted them to fill out the forms, but then
  said not to bother if it was only for an hour. The wallpaper in the room
  was blue, with enormous golden peonies, the window looked out onto a pit
  whence rose the odor of garbage cans. However weak the light bulb at the
  head of the bed, you could still see streaks of face powder and
  forgotten hairpins on the mantelpiece. On the ceiling above the bed was
  a large mirror.
  Once, but only once, Sir Stephen invited O to lunch with two of his
  compatriots who were passing through Paris. He came for her an hour
  before she was ready, and instead of having her driven to his place, he
  came to the quai de Bethune.
  O had finished bathing, but she had not done her hair or put on her
  make-up, and was not dressed. To her surprise, she saw that Sir Stephen
  was carrying a golf bag, though she saw no clubs in it. But she soon got
  over her surprise: Sir Stephen told her to open the bag. Inside were
  several leather riding crops, two fairly thick ones of red leather, two
  that were long and thin of black leather, a scourge with long lashes of
  green leather, each of which was folded back at the end to form a loop,
  a dog's whip made of a thick single lash whose handle was of braided
  leather and, last but not least, leather bracelets of the sort used at
  Roissy, plus some rope. O lad them outside by side on the unmade bed. No
  matter how accustomed she became to seeing them, no matter what
  resolutions she made about them, she could not keep from trembling. Sir
  Stephen took her in his arms.
  "Which do you prefer, O?" he asked her.
  But she could barely speak, and already could feel the sweat running
  down her arms.
  "Which do you prefer?" he repeated. "All right," he said confronted by
  her silence, "first you're going to help me."
  He asked for some nails, and having found a way to arrange them in a
  decorative manner, whips and riding crosses crossed, he showed O a panel
  of wainscoting between her mirror and the fireplace, opposite her bed,
  which would be ideal for them. He hammered some nails into the wood.
  There were rings on the ends of the handles of the whips and riding
  crops, by which they could be suspended from the nails, a system which
  allowed each whip to be easily taken down and returned to its place on
  the wall. Thus, together with the bracelets and the rope, O would have,
  opposite her bed, the complete array of her instruments of torture. It
  was a handsome panoply, as harmonious as the wheel and spikes in the
  painting of Saint Catherine, the martyr, as the nails and hammer, the
  crown of thorns, the spear and scourges portrayed in the paintings of
  the Crucifixion. When Jacqueline came back... but all this involved
  Jacqueline, involved her deeply. She would have to reply to Sir
  Stephen's question: O could not, he chose the dog whip himself.
  In a tiny private dining room of the La Pérouse restaurant, along the
  quays of the Left Bank, a room on the third floor whose dark walls were
  brightened by Watteau-like figures in pastel colors who resembled actors
  of the puppet theater, O was ensconced alone on the sofa, with one of
  Sir Stephen's friends in an armchair to her right, another to her left,
  and Sir Stephen across from her. She remembered already having seen one
  of the men at Roissy, but she could not recall having been taken by him.
  The other was a tall red-haired boy with gray eyes, who could not have
  been more than twenty-five. In two words, Sir Stephen told them why he
  had invited O, and what she was. Listening to him, O was once again
  astonished at the coarseness of his language. But then, how did she
  expect to be referred to, if not as a whore, a girl who, in the presence
  of men (not to mention the restaurant waiters who kept trooping in and
  out, since luncheon was being served) would open her bodice to bare her
  breasts, the tips of which had been reddened with lipstick, as they
  could see, as they could also see from the purple furrows across her
  milk-white skin that she had been flogged?
  The meal went on for a long time, and the two Englishmen drank a great
  deal. Over coffee, when the liqueurs had been served, Sir Stephen pushed
  the table back against the opposite wal and, after having lifted her
  skirt to show his friends how O was branded and in irons, left her to
  them.
  The man she had met at Roissy wasted no time with her: without leaving
  his armchair, without even touching her with his fingertips, he ordered
  her to kneel down in front him, take him and caress his sex until he
  discharged in her mouth. After which, he made her straighten out his
  clothing, and then he left.
  But the red-haired lad, who had been completely overwhelmed by O's
  submissiveness and meek surrender, by her irons and the welts which he
  had glimpsed on her body, took her by the hand instead of throwing
  himself upon her as she had expected, and descended the stairs, paying
  not the slightest heed to the sly smiles of the waiters and, after
  hailing a taxi, took her back to his hotel room. He did not let her go
  till nightfall, after having frantically plowed her fore and aft, both
  of which he bruised and belabored unmercifully, he being of an uncommon
  size and rigidity and, what is more being totally intoxicated by the
  sudden freedom granted him to penetrate a woman doubly and be embraced
  by her in the way he had seen ordered to a short while before (something
  he had never before dared ask of anyone).
  The following day, when O arrived at Sir Stephen's at two o'clock in
  answer to his summons, she found him looking older and his face
  careworn.
  "Eric has fallen head over heels in love with you, O," he told her.
  "This morning he called on me and begged me to grant you your freedom.
  He told me he wants to marry you. He wants to save you. You see how I
  treat you if you're mind, O, and if you are mine you have no right to
  refuse my commands; but you also know that you are always free to choose
  not to be mine. I told him so. He's coming back here at three."
  O burst out laughing. "Isn't it a little late?" she said. "You're both
  quite mad. If Eric had not come by this morning, what would you have
  done with me this afternoon? We would have gone for a walk, nothing
  more? Then let's go for a walk. Or perhaps you would not have summoned
  me this afternoon? In that case I'll leave...."
  "No," Sir Stephen broke in, "I would have called you, but not to go for
  a walk. I wanted..."
  "Go on, say it."
  "Come, it will be simpler to show you."
  He got up and opened a door in the wall opposite to the fireplace, a
  door identical to the one in his office.
  O had always thought that the door led into a closet which was no longer
  used. She saw a tiny bedroom, newly painted, and hung with dark red
  silk. Half of the room was occupied by a rounded stage flanked by two
  columns, identical to the stage in the music room at Samois.
  "The walls and ceiling are lined with cork, are they not?" O said. "And
  the door is padded, and you've had a double window installed?"
  Sir Stephen nodded.
  "But since when has all this been done?" O said.
  "Since you've been back."
  "Then why?..."
  "Why did I wait until today? Because I first wanted to hand you over to
  other men. Now I shall punish you for it. I've never punished you, O."
  "But I belong to you," O said. "Punish me. When Eric comes..."
  An hour later, when he was shown a grotesquely bound and spread-eagled O
  strapped to the two columns, the boy blanched, mumbled something and
  disappeared. O thought she would never see him again. She ran into him
  again at Roissy, at the end of September, and he had her consigned to
  him for three days in a row, during which he savagely abused and
  mistreated her.

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