"Yes!" she said.

"Did you expect to be displeasing with impurnity?" I asked.

She regarded me, red-eyed.

"I see you did," I said. "Well, now you have learned better."

"I was beaten!" she said.

"Your sense of outrage is inappropriate," I said. "I suggest you rid yourself of it, immediately, lest it become the occassion of further discipline."

"Discipline?" she asked.

"Slave discipline," I said.

She swollowed hard.

"Replace it with a suitable attitude of trepidation," I said. "You are only a slave."

I observed her naked flanks, on the robes.

She shuddered.

"You should not feel outrage," I told her. "You are only a slave. That is an emotion which would be more appropriate in a free woman, one, say, stripped, and unjustifiably beaten, as though she might be a mere slave. Beatings, on the other hand, are the due of slaves, particularly ones which are in the least respect displeasing, as they might be of any other owned animal."

"I might as well belong to anyone," she said, bitterly.

"That is true," I said. "But you belong to Canka."

"Yes," she said, bitterly. "I belong to Canka." She put her head down, weeping. "I'm so ashamed," she said. "I was so humiliated."

"I understand," I said. The females of the red savages, with their laughter and catcalls, in particular, would not have made the lovely slave's ordeal any easier. Too, that a given girl has been beaten, and has thus, presumably, failed to be fully pleasing in some way, makes her an object of contempt and ridicule among other girls. Little love is lost, commonly, between competitive slave girls. Girls commonly like seeing other girls being beaten, whom they think are too proud, or whome they don't like. It is almost a holiday in the slave quarters when a high slave is to be whipped, particularly if she is then to be reduced to the status of a common girl.

"Am I permitted to feel shame, humiliation?" she asked, angrily.

"Of course," I said. "Those are emotions which are permitted to slaves."

"How generous are the masters," she said.

"Too, shame and humiliation, like chains and whips, can be useful disciplinary devices."

"Of course," she said.

"A shamed, humiliated slave, tied and beaten, is usualy swift thereafter to learn her lessons," I said.

"I do not doubt it," she said.

"Tell me truthfully now," I said. "During the beating itself, before you were alone, writhing with the pain, what did you find most shameful, most humiliating?"

"Must I answer?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"That I knew, in my heart," she said, "that I deserved the beating, that I rechly deserved it."

"Oh?" I asked.

"I di dnot listen to Wasnapohdi," she said. "I was proud and vain. I was clumsy. I was stupid. I cut meat poorly. I displeased my master."

"I see," I said.

"Then I found myself stripped and tied on my knees at the whipping stake. I was to be publicly punished. Then the quirt fell upon me."

"Many times, in private beatings," I said, "such things as shame or humiliation will enter very little into the situation."

She regarded me.

"Often," I said, "the girl merely fears the leather, or its wary of it, and, hoping to give it a wide berth, behaves herself accordingly. For most practical purposes she knows that if she behaves in certain ways she will not feel it, and if she behaves in other ways, she will feel it. It is almost like a law of nature. It is always there, of course, in the background, and she knows that she is subject to it. Similarly, of course, even in her deepest love, she knows that, ultimately, her very life is dependent on the whim of her master. She can be thrown to sleen, at a word from him, if he wishes."

"We are so owned," she whispered.

"Sometimes," I said, "girls, some girls, who are not sure of their slavery, and its limits, will test their masters."

"Oh?" she said.

"Like you," I said.

"I?" she asked, startled.

"And the masters are not found wanting," I said. "The beauty is quickly rassured as to the existence of boundaries."

"I?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Do you think I wanted to be limited and controlled?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"That is absurd," she said. She rolled over on her back, on the dark robes, and threw her bound wrists over her head.

"You were not sure that you were really Canka's slave," I said. "You wished reassurance."

The beauty moved angrily. She did not answer.

"Have no fear, Winyela," I said. "The colalr, as you have no doubt by now discovered, is truly knotted on your neck."

I looked at her small feet, at thos trim ankles, at the sweet calves of her, her thighs, her belly, her breasts, the neck and shoulders, her throat, in Canka's collar, her profile, the lovely red hair, behind her on the robes.

"You're looking at me, aren't you?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"I hate men," she said. She quickly half sat, half knelt, on the robes, her bound hands on the robes.

"No, you don't," I said. "You hate yourself, or something ugly in yourself, probably left over from Earth, that sick world from which you came."

She threw herslef on her side, facing me, her legs pulled up, her bound hands before her. "I am miserable," she said.

"You are confused," I said. "You only wanted to be put in your place."

"MY place?" she said.

"Yes," I said, "your place, your place in the order of nature, that of a female at the feet of her master."

She did not respond.

"But it is a dangerous game," I said. "I would beware of playing it with Goreans. Suppose Canka had given you to boys, as a target for their arrows, or had rubbed you with blood, your own, and had set sleen on you."

"I am going to run away," she said, sullenly. She rose, angrily, to her feet. I noted how her small feet pressed in the robes.

"I would not advise it," I said.

"Oh?" she asked.

"There is nowhere to run," I said.

She walked angrily to the other side of the lodge, and then turned to face me, her bound wrists held then at her waist. She was beautiful. "It is true," she said, angrily. "There is nowhere to run," she looked down, at her left thigh. "I am even branded," she said, "like an animal."

"Like the animal you are," I said.

"Yes," she said, bitterly, "-like the animal I am."

"Kneel," I said, indicating a place before me, before where I sat, cross-legged, on the robes.

"Back on your heels," I said, "with your knees widely spread."

She complied.

"Put your shoulders back," I said. "Thrust your breasts out. Hold your wrists at your waist."

She complied.

I examined her. She was not only beautiful. She was very beautiful.

"This is my reality, isn't it," she said, "that of a slave, at the bidding of men."

"Yes," I said. "It is."

"May I lower my wrists?" she asked. "May I close my knees?"

"Yes," I said. Swiftly, she did so.

"I did not think that Canka would beat me," she said.

"Why not?" I asked.

"I thought he liked me," she said. Her wrists looked well, bound, atop her closed thighs.

"I suspect he does," I said.

"He beat me," she said, poutingly.

"You are a slave," I explained.

"I thought he liked me," she said.

"I would suppose that he does," I said. "Hitherto, at any rate, he has treated you with great lenience. That, in my opinion, was a mistake on his part. That lenience, if I am not mistaken, you will discover to have vanished. You will now discover, if I am not mistaken, that your life in his lodge will now be rather different."

"Different?" she asked.

"The discipine to which you will now find yourself subjected, I suspect," I said, "will leave you little doubt as to your bondage. It will be unswerving, precise and exact. If you deaprt from the narrow line of slave perfection by so much as a hort you may expect a cuffing, or the lash."