"I kneed before my master," said Lola. "I await my rape:"

I cried out with misery and frustration. Lola looked at me, startled, unable to comprehend the conflict which raged within me. I wanted to seize her and throw her to her back, and vent my wrath and joy upon her, uncompromisingly exercising the nocturnal rights which had been assigned to me over her, taking her hot slave flesh in my arms, making it writhe to my least touch, making her scream her submission to me as her master, but I knew that I was a man of Earth, and that she was a person.

Suddenly, angrily, stupidly, foolishly, I lashed out at her, cuffing her back with the back of my left hand. She fell backward. I was startled that I had struck her. Yet it had happened so swiftly I had hardly realized what I was doing. I had been furious not really with her, but with myself. Lola was innocent. She was only a naked, aroused, beautiful, collared slave at my feet. It was not her fault that she had been thrown to me nor was it her fault that her needs were those of what she was, a slave girl. Yet she was the obvious precipitant of my dilemma, my misery. It was thus that I had suddenly, irrationally, struck her. It was foolish, and meaningless, that I had done so. She was flung back in the straw, blood at her beautiful mouth. I expected her to look at me with horror and reproach. Instead, she put down her head and crawled swiftly to my feet. She then lay on her stomach in the straw before me, her upper body lifted on her elbows, her head down, over my feet. I felt her lips, sweet and full, kissing at my feet. There was a kind of wonder and pleasure in her voice. "Yes, Master," she said. "Thank you, Master. I am sorry if I was not pleasing to you." I then understood that she had taken the blow as a token of my mastery over her, an explicit expression of my sovereignty over her. I felt her lips kissing at my feet, happily, gratefully.

"It is enough," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said. She continued to lie at my feet, her head turned to the side, her right cheek on my feet. I felt her hair, too, on my feet.

A slave girl is subject to discipline. She may be struck with or without reason. Usually, of course, the master would have a reason, however trivial it might be. Sometimes, of course, he may strike her with no obvious reason whatsoever, even one which is trivial. This serves to remind hex that she is a slave and that no reason is needed to strike her.

I looked down at Lola.

She looked up at me, and then, turning her head and lifting herself on her elbows, she again kissed my feet. She then rolled from my feet a yard or so away in the straw. She lay on her back and regarded me, happily. "It will not be necessary to strike me again, Master," she said. "I will be docile, and obedient and loving." She looked up at me, smiling, her left knee raised, her hands beside her, palms up, in the straw. "Have me, Master," she said. "Subject me, uncompromisingly, to your pleasure."

"Do you beg it?" I asked. I did not know why I asked the question.

"Yes, Master," she said, smiling, "I beg it."

"Why were you put in with me tonight?" I asked.

"To be punished," she said. She smiled. "I await my punishment, Master," she said.

Then suddenly I was afraid, and guilty, and confused. I was weak, and I reddened, and stammered. I had struck the poor thing. And surely she did not expect me to be strong, and to take her in hand, as would have a Gorean master. I was of Earth. And did she not know she was a person?

"I am sorry I struck you," I stammered. "It was a stupid and cruel thing to do. I was really angry not so much at you, as at myself. I behaved as a brute. I am very sorry."

She looked at me, frightened. She did not understand me, or the forces which moved within me. How could she have understood me, she a Gorean girl, collared, whom strong men had long ago taught her womanhood? Did she not know that I, because of my fears, was trying to make her like a man? Could she not, like many of the women of Earth, because of her own fears, try, too, to be like a man? Each sex could then, because of its fears, try to protect itself from the other, denying the obvious complementarities of nature, the fitting together of diverse dispositions and modalities. The wholeness is not achieved, the puzzle is not solved, by trying to put togather pieces of the same configuration.

I looked at her. Quickly, trembling, confused, she knelt, making herself small. She put her head down to the straw.

"Do not be cruel to me," she begged. "If I have displeased you, simply whip me. I do not understand you, or what you are doing. I am only a poor female slave. Please do not tor. ture me in this insidious fashion. If I have so grievously displeased you, I beg to be simply put under the honesty of a leather discipline."

"I do not understand," I said.

She moaned. "Please do not subject me to these tortures, Master," she begged. "Lola is only a poor slave. Just tie her and whip her. Perhaps then she will learn to please. you better."

"I am not trying to be cruel to you," I said. "I am trying to be kind to you."

She moaned.

"Look up," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said. She looked up, frightened.

"I'm sorry I struck you," I said. "I am very sorry."

"But Lola is only a slave," she said. "Slaves are meant to be struck and abused."

"I am sorry," I said.

"Sorry?" she said.

"Yes," I said. "I am truly sorry."

She shuddered. "Tie me and whip me," she begged.

"Mere," I said, hurrying to the wine, which I had left on the table behind me. I took the wine and, as the girl trembled, crouched near her, holding the wine to her lips. Shuddering, she drank. "You see," I said, "you served me wine, now I serve you wine."

"Yes, Master," she said, trembling.

I understand now her trepidation better than I did at the time. My emotional conflicts and frustrations, my warring motivations, expressing themselves in inconsistencies in speech and behavior, had terrified her. She was a Gorean girl, and her experiences on Gor had not prepared her to understand a male who had been taught to suspect his own nature, and to torture and lacerate himself for impulses, desires and feelings as natural as the circulation of the blood and the movement of molecules through the membranes of cells. Shame she could understand, such things as the chagrin of a man who has failed in honor, but pathologically conditioned guilts, instilled neurotic anxieties, used as control devices to perpetuate sickened societies. were unfamiliar to her. I think, now, she may have feared that she was in the presence of a madman, one to whom her beauty, her vulnerability and helplessness seemed meaningless, one who seemed not to understand that she was a woman and a slave, one who seemed ignorant of her desires, impervious to her needs, one who did not seem to know what to do with her or how to handle her, one who, though ostensibly sane, and possibly dangerously strong, yet behaved unpredictably and irrationally, one who, though ostensibly a male, behaved in no fashion remotely resembling that of a man. It is little wonder she was frightened. Sorely, she must have surmised, if I were not mad, I was at least a fool. Who but a fool would not drink when he was thirsty, or eat when he was hungry? But I was not a madman or a fool. I was neither, or perhaps both. I was a man of Earth.

"Forgive me," I begged the girl.

She shuddered, spilling a bit of wine. She looked at me with terror. I did not strike her.

"Are you finished?" I asked.

She nodded her head, frightened.

"There is some left," I said. "Finish it"

I held the chipped bowl, and the girl, frightened, finished the wine. I put the shallow, chipped bowl on the table.

I returned to the girl, and crouched down beside her. She feared to meet my eyes.