I stood up, as though angry. With the whip I gestured her to her belly on the soft, deeply piled carpet. She trembled, lying transversely on the carpeting near the edge of the dais, before the curule chair, her hands beside her head, her fingers clutching at the piling. "He conquered me, fully, and as a slave," she said. "I confess it!" I examined her form dispassionately, and found it not displeasing. I then, with deft touches of the whip, indicated that she should turn to her back and lie in a certain position. With the sound of slave bells she did so. She then lay on her back, before me. Her body and left leg lay on the dais. Her right leg, and her right arm and hand, were on the broad stair, leading to the height of the dais. Her hands were below her hips, both that to her left, and right, which was on the stair. The palms of both hands were turned upwards, exposed to me.

"Yes," she wept, "he conquered me! Forgive me, Master! I am only a female, and a weak slave!"

I examined her beauty. It was that of a slave. It was ravishing. _'How fortunate is this fellow, Jason of Victoria, _ I thought to myself, smiling inwardly, _'to have conquered himself such a prize. _ Some men conquer themselves. Others conquer women.

"I love you, Master," she said. "I love you. I love you!" She lifted her belled wrists, her small hands, supplicatingly, piteously extended to me. "Forgive me, my Master," she said. "Do not kill me. I do not wish to die. Let me placate you! Let me placate you!"

Things had preceded precisely as I had planned. Given sufficient time, and the obligation to speak, through natural associations and continuities she had confessed her love for Jason of Victoria to me. Let her now be terrified of the wrath of her Gorean master.

I cast aside the whip and, with two hands, seizing her by the waist, I lifted her a foot from the dais; she was bent backwards in my hands, her head and feet down. "Forgive me, my Master!" she begged. Then I threw her back upon the dais. She pulled her legs up, frightened, and turned to the side.

"Please do not kill me, Master," she begged. I then, with two hands, seized her ankles and threw them widely apart, with a jangle of slave bells. I then ruthlessly had her. Later, I had her again, more methodically, her head hanging down, over the dais, on the broad stair leading to its height. Then, later, I pulled her supine to the height of the dais, and, not hurrying, spending much time looking into her eyes, and studying her expressions, had her before the curule chair.

I then, at last, with a cry of angry pleasure, withdrew from her, and stood up. I looked down upon her. There had been little sound save that of our breathing and of her bells. "I hope that I have pleased my Master," she said, frightened. As though angry I strode to the frame within which hung the small gong. With the fur-wrapped striking surface of the wand, removed from its rack, I smote the gong, once, smartly, decisively.

Swiftly, in a matter of moments, Lola ran into the room. The slave whom I had so richly used knelt, frightened, confused, on the height of the dais. "Quickly, Slave," commanded Lola, "come stand before me, at the foot of the dais, your head down." Swiftly the girl obeyed, trembling. Lola had brought with her the objects which I had specified in my instructions to her, issued even before the slave had been ordered to report to the cosmetics room.

The first object was the key to the slave's bells and collar. Lola removed the bells from her left ankle, putting them on the rug. "What is wrong, Master?" inquired the dark-haired slave. Lola then removed the bells from her right ankle, placing them, too, on the rug.

"I am sorry if I have displeased you, Master," said the dark-haired girl, frightened. Lola then removed the bells from the girl's left wrist. "Forgive me, Master," wept the girl. "I will try to be a better slave!" The bells, then, were removed from her right wrist. "Please, Master," wept the girl. "Please!" The key was then inserted into the small, heavy lock on the back of the girl's collar. "Please, my Master," begged the girl, "have mercy on me!"

Then the collar was removed from her, and placed with the belled anklets, and wristlets, on the rug. The beautiful slave, not daring to raise her head, shuddered visibly. It can be an extremely frightening thing for a slave girl to be between collars. What is to be done to her?

I then took the second object which Lola had brought into the room, an eighteen-inch length of Gorean binding fiber. Such fiber does not slip. It is designed for the binding of slaves and prisoners. The girl winced as I bound her wrists tightly behind her. I then took from Lola the third object which she had brought into the room. The slave regarded it with horror. It was a slave hood, with a gag attachment, common in many such hoods. "Do not kill me, Master!" begged the slave. "Please do not kill me!"

I thrust the thick, curled wadding of the gag deeply into her mouth. In her mouth it expanded. Then, using the cord and eyelets, I laced the two ends of the broad, flat binding surface, to which, in the front and the center, the wadding was attached, tightly together behind the back of her neck. She moaned. She was well gagged. She looked at me, wildly. It was a fitting gag for a slave, I thought. Then I took the attached hood and pulled it up and over her head, and then jerked it down, that her head be fully covered. Then, using its strap and loops, I tied the hood in place, securely shut, under her chin.

I then regarded her. The slave was well bound and hooded. I then removed the mask which I had worn, and thrust it in my pouch. I then threw her to my shoulder, her head over my back. She moaned. I then left the house of my friend. I was grateful for its use. The girl on my shoulder would know nothing of our destination. For all she knew she was being taken to a butcher shop, there to be dismembered for sleen feed. Such may be done to a girl, if it be the will of her master.

The former Miss Henderson, who had been so excruciatingly troublesome and so tantalizingly beautiful, was now over my shoulder, hooded and bound, my slave. Lola would follow, in an Ahn. I was well pleased.

In the Gorean streets I attracted little attention. It is not that unusual, in such streets, for a man to carry a naked slave, bound and hooded, over his shoulder. To be sure, such girls are often tied in a slave sack. The children that we passed in the streets, playing at marbles or stone toss, scarcely glanced up. Two children, however, one boy and one girl, did run and strike the slave. She started, and squirmed, on my shoulder under the blows.

I did not admonish the children. First, it was nothing to me that they had struck her, for she was a slave. Secondly, they were free persons, and free persons on Gor may do much what they please. It is slaves who must be careful of their behavior, lest free persons find it displeasing. The boy who had struck her, I believe, had been in a fit of ill temper. I think he had just lost at stone toss.

The girl, on the other hand, I think, had had far different motivations. She had not been involved in the game, but had only been watching it. Yet she had struck the slave by far the cruelest blow. Already she had learned, as a free woman, that female slaves are to be despised and beaten. The hatred of the free woman on Gor for the female slave is an interesting phenomenon. There are probably many reasons for this.

Among them, however, would seem to be a jealousy of the female slave's desirability and beauty, a resentment of the interest of free men in imbonded women, and an envy of the slave girl's psychological and biological fulfillments, and emotional freedom and joy. Something of the same hatred and contempt tends to be felt by masculine women on Earth towards feminine women. Perhaps they hate what they are not, and perhaps cannot be. The Gorean slave girl, incidentally, can be terrorized by the mere thought that she might be sold to a free woman. I glanced at the girl who had struck the slave. She was comely. I wondered if she might one day fall slave. If so, she, too, in her turn, would surely learn to fear free women.