"No," said my hostess. "But that was your hope, in the beginning, wasn't it, Lady Labiena?"

"No," said the woman, putting her head down.

"But when it was learned that she had been captured," said my hostess, "she was cast off by her family, and sworn from the Home Stone."

"My life as a free person was unsatisfactory to me," said the woman.

"Watch your tongue, prisoner," said the female holding her neck chain. "It seems now," I said, "that you are neither fully a free person nor a slave." "It amuses them," she said, "to keep me as a free person in their power, for their customers."

"Occasionally such women are available in these places," I said.

"You do not know what I have done here," she said, looking up, "what I have been made to do!"

"I can speculate," I assured her.

"But much of what she has done here," said the woman holding her neck chain, "has been simply servile. For example, we enjoy having her naked, on all fours, on a chain, scrubbing floors."

"But surely she has been put upon occasion to the uses of your customers," I said.

"Of course," said the woman holding the neck chain, "haven't you, Lady Labiena." "Yes," said the kneeling woman, her knees wide, her tunic parted.

I regarded her.

"But I have learned things here," she said, "that I never dreamed of as a free woman. I have been able to sense here the ecstasies of bondage, the ecstasies of a life obligatorily sensual, a life under strict discipline, a life where I must obey, a life where I will, and must, surrender myself totally and, subject to penalties, and even death, if I am displeasing, live thenceforth solely for service and love."

"You sing the joys of a love slave, surely," I said, "not the woes of a woman who must crawl beneath the whip of a hated master."

"Do you not think a love slave crawls fearfully beneath the whip of her master?" she asked. "The love slave is still a slave, you see," I said, "and perhaps more a slave than any other."

"Yes," whispered the woman.

"She is held in her bondage by the strongest of all bonds," I said, "that of love."

"Yes," she said.

"It is stronger than the chain on your neck," I said.

"I know," she said.

"It must then be very strong," laughed the woman who held her chain. She gave it a tug, jerking it against the side of the woman's neck.

"It is," I said.

"They give me to anyone here," said the woman. "Some are hideous, some smell, in the fetid breath of some I almost choke and die, and yet I must serve them, unquestioningly, although a free woman, according to whatever their dictates and whims."

I regarded the woman.

"I want a private master," she said. "I want my own master."

"It is a natural desire on the part of a female." I said.

Then she looked up, suddenly, piteously, at the woman who was holding her neck chain. "I want a collar," she said to her. "You know that. I have begged for it. Why will you not give me a collar? You have made me, in effect, a slave. Now I am good for nothing else. I have learned too much! Why deny me the mark, the collar? Why do you so shame me? Put me in a collar, that what I now know I am may be proclaimed to the world! I want to be sold! I want to find a master! I am ready to serve, and fully!"

"Be silent," said the woman who held her chain. "That is no way for a free woman to speak. Put your head to the floor, pull your tunic up over your head!" Frightened, the woman did as she was told. The woman who had her in her keeping then called to another of the hostesses. "Three strokes," she told her. That woman then, with her whip, struck Lady Labiena three times.

"Replace your tunic and kneel straightly," said her keeper.

Lady Labiena, tears running down her cheeks, complied. "We have told you, Lady Labiena," said my hostess. "We are merely keeping you for a friend."

"For whom are you keeping me?" she begged.

"That is for us to know, and for you to wonder," she said.

"Tell him, if you would," she said, "that his capture is now ready to be imbonded, that she is now ready to lick his feet and beg a collar, that she is ready to be used, or sold, whatever be his will."

"That is Lady Labiena," said my hostess. "See how feminine she is? See how right she is for a man?"

"Yes," I said.

"Chain her at his mat's slave ring," said my hostess.

"No," I said.

"What?" asked my hostess.

"No," I said.

"Clearly she is fit for the collar," said my hostess.

"True," I said. "But she is not yet in a collar. She is a mere free woman. She does not yet know the collar. She does not yet feel it in every part of her. Its meaning has not yet soaked into her brain, her skin, her belly, even to the tips of her toes."

"You are not interested in free females?" she said.

"Not particularly," I reminded her. This is not that unusual in one who has tasted of slaves. As women, there is no comparison between a free woman and her imbonded sister. Perhaps that is why free women so hate slaves. To be sure, there is something to be said for free women. It is enjoyable to capture, enslave and train them. That is interesting. But then, of course, in a matter of time, one is not then dealing any longer with a free woman, but only another slave.

"Close your tunic, you brazen slut," said my hostess to the Lady Labiena, who hurriedly drew it together, obeying. Then she said to the woman who held her chain. "Take her away."

The Lady Labiena was led from the floor, through the door from which she had earlier emerged. Presumably she would be fastened by her neck chain to a wall or floor ring within, until she was brought forth again on the floor.

My hostess then lifted her head and looked to the left of the open space, where several females huddled. It was hard to tell in the light, but I thought they were naked. She cracked her whip, and they scurried swiftly to the table, where they knelt. They were naked.

"Now these are slaves," I said. I examined them. How incredibly beautiful and sensuous they were, how soft and vulnerable, how owned. It was not merely that they were nude and that their necks were locked in steel collars. It was something else, almost indefinable, but very real, about them, which marked them as slaves, something which seemed to say, "We are slaves, Masters. We are yours. Do with us as you will."

The woman cracked her whip again and the girls inadvertently cringed and shrank back. They were slaves, and knew well that sound. Two of them had even cried out in fear. The woman then went to the line. "Straighten your bodies," she said. "You are in the presence of a man." She touched more than one with the whip coils, adjusting her posture, and, with the coils, lifted up the chin of another. Then she turned to me. "These are available," she said. "Perhaps you find one or more of them pleasing?"

I surveyed the women.

"Such," she said, "are fit for men."

"Yes," I said.

"They are pleasant, meaningless creatures," she said.

I did not respond to the woman. There was a sense, of course, in which the slave girl is meaningless, the sense in which she is nothing, the sense in which she is a mere property, a rightless object, fittingly to be scorned, to be treated as one pleases, to be made to serve, to be disciplined or whipped, to be kept or cast away, as one might choose, and yet, in another sense, what meaning could a free woman even begin to have, compared to that of a slave at one's feet? "Are they not pretty?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

I regarded the slaves.

They knelt before me, in the half darkness, in a line. They had been well positioned. Their collars glinted, the steel reflecting the dim, reddish light of the tiny lamps. Their flesh, too, that of offerings of the house, so cheaply available, revealed the effects of this same dim illumination. The free woman, Ludmilla proprietress of this establishment, and of several others on the street, had some concept, it seemed, as to at least one way in which female slaves might be presented before men. One does not, of course, buy a woman in such light. Preferably one considers them in strong light with great care. Indeed, preferably one does not put out any money until one has carefully examined every inch of her fair body. Even girls who are to be auctioned are commonly available, in exposition cages or display spaces, and sometimes for handling, for inspection before a sale, that one may determine whether or not he wishes to make a bid, and, also, of course, how high he might be willing to go to acquire her.