It then seems, as she shrinks back, lifting herself to the palms of her hands, frightened, that the gate to her pen has been opened. She kneels swiftly in the position of the pleasure slave. Obviously she fears her rude jailers. Twice, it seems she is struck with a whip. Then she, again, assumes the position of the pleasure slave. She nods her head. She understands well what is expected of her. She is to perform well on the tiles of the feasting hall. "Yes, Masters!" it seems she says.

But how little do her jailers, perhaps only common and boorish fellows, understand that this is precisely what she, too, deeply and desperately desires to do. How long she has waited, in cruel frustration, unfulfilled and lonely, in her cell for just such a moment, that precious opportunity in which she, a mere slave, may be permitted to display and present herself for the consideration of her master. How can they understand the poignancy, and significance, of this moment for her? She is to have an opportunity to present herself before the master! Who knows if she, in such a large house, one with such cells and jailers, may ever again be given such an opportunity?

It then seems that she is hauled to her feet and that her wrists, tightly and cruelly, are bound behind her back. Her body and head are then bent far over. Her head twists. It seems a man's hand is in her hair. Not as a high slave, clothed in Jewelries and shimmering silks, tastefully bound, is she to be conducted to the site of her performance, some aristocratic banquet; rather, cruelly bound and nude, she is to be thrown before masters at a drunken feast. She then, with small, hurried steps, bent over, described a wide circle on the tiles. Then, it seemed, she was thrown to her knees, and then her side, before us. Her hands were still held as though tightly bound behind her. She looked at us. We were, of course, the "masters," before whom she was to perform. She rose to her feet. She twisted, as though her hands were being untied. She then flexed her legs and lifted her hands over her head, as she had in the beginning, back to back.

The final phases of the Sa-eela then begin.

In these phases the girl, in all her unshielded beauty, and naked except for the collar of slavery, attempts to arouse the interest of her master.

In the former Peggy Baxter, of Earth, I now saw little left which was reminiscent of her planet of origin. Before us there danced a Gorean slave girl.

I glanced about, to the small, dark-haired slave clutching my arm, to Lola, in the arms of Calliodorus, to Florence, kneeling behind Miles of Vonda, to she who had been Shirley, in her yellow gauze, kneeling to one side, now the slave of Aemilianus. They were breathing deeply. Their eyes shone. In fascination, and in arousal, and fear, they watched the beautiful slave. They knew that they, too, wore collars.

Peggy's body gleamed with sweat. She had small feet, and lovely, high arches. Her body was superb. She had retained, by means of diet and exercise, her block measurements, those measurements which were hers when she, after having been prepared for sale, was marketed from a slave block.

The master commonly has a record of such measurements and many masters, using a tarsk scale, used for small livestock, and slave tapes, periodically check their lovely properties, making certain that they are maintaining the measurements. And woe to the girl, in such a case, whose measurements are found to depart to any significant extent from the block measurements! Such a departure can be an occasion for corrective discipline, and of a quite severe sort. Sometimes, when one sees a fearful girl refusing the smallest of sweets and exercising, almost in desperation, one may suspect, in amusement, that the day on which her master plans to check her measurements is not far distant. The lovely figures of slave girls are not accidents. Only free women are permitted to become unkempt and gross.

Peggy was dancing well.

She had lovely arms, and lovely, slender wrists. They would look well roped, or clasped in slave steel.

She had now entered into the display phase of the Sa-eela. In this portion of the dance the girl calls attention to the various aspects of her beauty, from the swirling sheen of her cascading hair to her ankles, from her small feet to her tiny, fine fingers.

Women are so incredibly beautiful. It is a wonder that men do not scream with pleasure, seeing them.

It is little wonder that Goreans put them in collars, and own them.

"Oh!" gasped the naked, collared little beauty kneeling near me. I smiled. I recalled that she had seen little on Gor of the dancing of female slaves.

I looked at her.

"She is so sensuous, and female!" she whispered.

I shrugged. "She is a slave," I said.

Free women, incidentally, are seldom permitted to witness dances of the erotic power of the Sa-eela. The major reason for this, interestingly, is not that they might be offended or outraged, but for their own protection. Many times lovely, young free women, sometimes thinking that they have cleverly disguised themselves, donning male garments, pretending to be boys, thus seeking admission to the dances, find themselves set upon and stripped. Soon, in chains and well ravished, they find themselves as much slaves as the dancer. Perhaps, in their turn, too, they will be taught to dance. On their way to the market they may, if they wish, reflect upon what they, at that time, are likely to regard as their folly. Later, at the feet of a strong man, they may become clearer on the nature of the motivations that took them to such a performance in the first place. They were courting slavery, begging, in their way, for the steel of the collar, pleading to be subject, if they were not pleasing, to the cut of the whip. They had not truly been free women; they had only been, unbeknownst to themselves, slaves in search of their masters.

"I am hot, Master," said the little slave kneeling beside me.

"A bold admission," I said, "for a former Earth girl."

"And I am frightened," she whispered, suddenly.

"Of course," I said. "You now realize, even more clearly than before, what it might mean to be a slave on Gor."

She then clutched my arm, even more tightly, and then, she kneeling beside me, small and naked, helpless and vulnerable, her throat locked in the steel of my collar, on the tiles, we watched the dance of the female slave.

The music now, pounding and throbbing, mounted headily toward the climax of the Sa-eela.

In these, the final portions of the Sa-eela, the slave, in effect, puts herself at the mercy of the Master. She has already presented before him, almost in a delectable enumeration, many of the more external and rhythmic aspects of her beauty. She has displayed herself hitherto before him rather as an object in which, hopefully, he might take an interest.

A woman may do this, of course, from many motives, such as fear or her desire to be purchased by an affluent master, only one of which might be her authentic, poignant desire to be found pleasing by him, for her own sake. In such displays there can be, though there often is not, a subtle psychological distinction, detectable in the behavior, between the merchandise, so to speak, and the girl who is displaying herself as merchandise. In the first case, where no true distinction exists, which is the authentic case, the girl, in effect, says, "I am for sale. Buy me, and love me!"

In the second case, the girl, in effect, says, "Here is a fine slave. Are you not interested in her?" In the second case, of course, the Gorean is interested, though the girl may not understand this clearly, in not only the merchandise but the girl who is displaying the merchandise. She might truly be terrified if she understood that it was she herself he intended to own, and, in fact, was going to own, she the exhibitor of the merchandise as well as she, the merchandise exhibited. Goreans, as I have mentioned, are interested in owning the whole woman, in all her sweetness, depth, complexity and individuality. They, and their whips and chains, settle for nothing less. To think of the imbonded woman as a slave object is in one sense quite correct, but, in another sense, it is a perversion of, and a failure to understand, the intimate and beautiful relations which can exist between masters and slaves.