an essential of her, as well, as was the whole totality of her? How could she be ever, in a sense, less than her wholeness? To be sure, the part is sometimes easier to relish, to appreciate and understand, when it is conceived in isolation from the whole. Too, occasional localizations, selective isolations, and such, may lead to a more enhanced understanding of, and a more appreciative comprehension of, the whole. A woman, hooded, of course, finding herself in this situation of anonymity and helplessness, is likely to waste little time in becoming sensitized to what is going on in, and with, her body. She becomes, in virtue of this device, and various devices, psychological and physical, such as respect and obedience, garments and bonds, and such, sensitized to her sensations, her feelings, and emotions, and, through these, of course, she comes to a much deeper understanding of her own sexuality, and, ipso facto, of her own life and meaning. These things tend, on the whole, to be consequences of certain biological complementarities.
“You must understand,” she whispered, “that various details, pertinent to ourselves and our contracts, have now been brought to the attention of the buyers.”
“Continue,” said Brenner.
She lifted the sheet a little, that her ankles might be glimpsed, and, shortly thereafter, her calves.
At one point Brenner half rose from the chair. “Stop!” he cried. And then he cried, “No! Do not stop!”
In a few moments she knelt upon the bed, half crouched down, the sheet discarded, her hair about her, wildly, her hands now, as though with a sudden, belated recollection of terror or reserve, incongruous with the recent demands of her display, crossed over her breasts.
Brenner rose from the chair, hurling it to the side, only seizing control of himself at the edge of the bed. She looked up at him.
Their eyes met, those of male and female.
He was angered that she knelt so, so crouched down, so covering herself.
He seized the silks from the bed and held them, clutched, in his hand, and then hurled them from the surface of the bed, to the side, to the floor. She looked after them, she naked, they no longer within her reach. He took her by the shoulders and thrust her to her back on the bed. She lay there, looking up at him. Then, perhaps fearing what she saw in his eyes, frightened at what effects she might have had upon him, she whimpered, and turned away, drawing up her knees, keeping her breasts covered with her crossed arms.
He went about the bed and, as she suddenly gasped, startled at the audacity of his action, pulled a collar and chain from the peg on which it hung. He snapped the collar shut about her throat and then fastened its chain to the bar at the head of the bed. The chain was some eighteen Commonworld inches in length. He then turned her from her side to her back. Still she kept her breasts covered, she lying there now on her back, on the bed, fastened to the bar at its head.
“Would you have bid for me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“You have chained me,” she said.
“You are in effect a slave,” he said. “It is fitting that you be chained as one.”
“I am a free woman,” she said.
He laughed. Did she not know herself? Could she not understand herself? Had she been unaware of how she had appeared, of how she had had herself seen, of how she had acted, of the obvious revelations, the obvious meanings, of her behavior? In the face of such things how suddenly pointless, how suddenly empty, irrelevant, and absurd became the accident, or mere technicality, of her official legal status.
“Would you have bid high for me?” she asked.
He went again to the wall at the side and took a pair of bracelets from their peg. He pulled her right wrist away from he body and she instantly covered her breasts with her left arm. He snapped the bracelet on her right wrist. He then turned her to her stomach and drew her right wrist behind her. He then drew he left wrist, too, behind her, and, with the second bracelet, fastened her wrists together. Three links joined the bracelets. He then turned her to her back, again, and looked down upon her. She pulled against the bracelets a little, and then lay there quietly, looking up at him.
“Yes,” he said.
Then, suddenly, he turned away from her. It was in agony that he forced