"Please forgive me," I begged.

She shuddered.

"Forgive me," I said, irritably.

"I forgive you, Master," she said, quickly.

"I did not mean, truly, to order you to forgive me," I said. "I would appreciate it if you, of your own free will, would voluntarily forgive me."

"Yes, Master," she whispered. "I forgive you, of my own free will, voluntarily."

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't hurt me, please, Master," she begged. She refused to meet my eyes.

"Look at me," I said.

"Please do not torture me, Master," she said.

"Look at me," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

She lifted her head and looked into my eyes. I was startled. The girl was genuinely frightened.

I saw the slender steel collar on her neck. My eyes must have momentarily hardened, or glinted. She shuddered. Then I again controlled myself. "You need not call me `Master'," I said, kindly.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Do not call me `Master'," I said.

"I am a slave, Master," she wept. Disrespect in a slave can be punishable by death.

"Do not call me `Master'," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said. "I mean 'Yes,'" she wept.

"Call me `Jason'," I said.

She looked away from me, down, trembling, terrified. " `Jason'," she whispered. "Please do not kill me, Master."

"I do not understand," I said.

"You have scorned my beauty," she wept. "You refused to rape me. You have forced me to show you disrespect. Now will you not, cruelly, punish me for being insufficiently beautiful, for not having yielded in your arms as an abject slave, and for having shown you disrespect? Will you not now throw me to your feet and kick and beat me mercilessly, venting your displeasure upon me?"

"Of course not," I said.

She shrank back. "The House of Andronicus would not like it if you killed me," she said. "I am their property."

"I have no intention of killing you," I said.

She shook with relief. Then she looked at me. "I am here," she said. "What are you going to do with me?"

"Nothing," I said.

"I find that hard to believe, Master," she said.

I shrugged.

"What game are you playing with me?" she said. "For what cruel treatment and punishment are you preparing me?"

"None," I said.

She shuddered. "I know you ire not of Gor," she said. "Are all men of your world like you?" she asked.

"Most, I suppose," I said.

"How their slaves must live in terror of them," she said.

"Most men of my world do not have slaves," I said. "Our women, almost uniformly, are kept free."

"Whether they wish it or not?" she asked.

"Of course," I said, "in such a matter their wishes are unimportant."

"That is called freedom?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "I suppose so."

"But some men, strong men," she said, "must enslave their women."

I nodded. I had known of such cases. Such men, I supposed, made their own laws.

"But most men of your world," she said, "do not have slaves."

"Of course not," I said.

"Did you have slaves?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"Not even one slave?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"Are you typical of those of your world?" she asked.

"I think so," I said.

"If that is true," she said, regarding me narrowly, "how is that you know so well how to plunge a woman into terror?"

"If I have inadvertently frightened you," I said, "I am truly sorry. Such was not my intention."

"I am naked and collared, and at your mercy," she said. "Do you truly expect me to believe that you have nothing in store for me?"

"I will not abuse you," I said. "You are safe with me. Have no fear."

"You torture me so," she cried. "Why do you not just do what you are going to do and have done with it? Was I truly so cruel to you that you have seen fit to subject me to these agonies?"

I did not know how to reassure her.

"Is there some cruel caprice you intend to practice upon me," she asked, "some humiliating and degrading performance you will exact from me for your pleasure?"

"Do not be afraid," I said.

"Torturer," she wept. "Torturer!"

"Do not be afraid," I said.

She put her head in her hands, weeping. "How cruel and insidious are the men of your world," she wept. "How simple and bluff are the exactions of the men of Gor in comparison. Why could you not, simply, have made me serve you, and then raped and beaten me if you wished?"

"I have no intention of doing you harm," I said.

She, sobbing, crawled to the bench where I had left the whip. She took it from the bench in her teeth and, carrying it in her teeth, crawled to me. She lifted the whip in her teeth to me. I took it from between her small white teeth. "Whip me," she begged.

I threw the whip aside. "No," I said.

She, shuddering, lay at my feet. She did not know what would be done with her.

I did not speak to her but went to the dark blanket which lay to one side on the straw. I spread the blanket, which was heavy, and fashioned from the wool of the bounding hart, on the straw. I gestured to the blanket. "Lie on the blanket," I told her, kindly.

She crept to the blanket and lay upon it, on her back. Her body was very beautiful on the dark blanket. She touched her collar, lightly, with her finger tips. She was a slave. She looked at me. "Does it begin now?" she asked.

I stood over her, and looked down at her small, trembling body, open to whatever I might choose to inflict upon it.

I crouched beside her, and her eyes, terrified, met mine. "Please be kind to Lola, Master," she whispered. "She is only your poor slave."

Gently I took the half of the blanket on which she was not lying and drew it over her, covering her. "It is late now," I said. "You must be tired. Go to sleep."

She looked at me, frightened, disbelievingly. "Are you not going to own me?" she asked.

"Of course not," I said. "Rest now, pretty Lola." Then I realized that I, a man of Earth, should not have called her `pretty Lola. That she was pretty, decidedly so, and helplessly a slave, must be ignored; such things must not be recognized. They might interfere with the artificial constructions of neuteristic personhood, constructions in terms of which my. conditioning required me to view her. How foolish it now seems to me that I then refused to see a beauty as a beauty, and a slave as a slave.

"Are you not going to share the blanket?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"But I am branded, and wear a collar," she said.

"Rest," I said. "Go to sleep, Lola."

I went to the far wall of the cell, that opposite the bars. I sat back against the wall.

"Go to sleep," I said to the girl, gently.

She looked at me, the blanket pulled about her neck. "Am I not to be tied, or chained?" she asked.

"No," I said.

She lay there, quietly.

"You are safe," I told her. "Go to sleep"

"Yes, Master," she said. "Master," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"I am a slave." she said.

"Yes," I said.

"Are you not going to treat me as a slave?" she asked.

"Of course not," I said. "I am a man of Earth."

Did she truly think that I, a man of Earth, would treat her as a slave, merely because she was a slave?

She was silent.

"Go to sleep," I told her.

"Yes, Master," she said.

I leaned back against the wall, sitting in the straw. The girl lay very quietly. We did not speak for a long time. Then, after perhaps an Alm, I heard her moan, and saw her twist under the blanket.

"Master," I heard her beg. "Master."

I went to her side.

In the half light, she thrust the dark blanket down about her thighs. She half sat, half lay, on the lower portion of the blanket. She looked at me. She tried to put her small hands out, to clasp me piteously behind the neck. But I caught her wrists, and held her hands from me. "Master," she begged. "Please, Master" Her body, small and curved, was beautiful in the half light. Her breasts were marvelous. I toted the sweet turn of her body where the curve of her belly yielded to the flare of her hips.