"That is the way men will think of me, and look at me, I assure you," she said.

"Absurd," said the girl. "What are you even doing here? Why are you here?"

(pg. 178) "I am here," she said, "for the same reason you are,"

"Why is that?" asked the girl.

"Surely you can guess," she said.

"Why?" asked the girl.

"I was not brought here, and put here among these women, because I was your mother, I assure you," she said.

"Why then?" asked the girl.

"I do not wish to speak," she said, "before you,"

"Speak," demanded the girl.

"I have been found attractive by men," she said.

"You?" asked the girl, scornfully.

"Yes," she said. "Is it so hard to understand, or accept, that men might find your mother an attractive female, a desirable property, a lovely animal, a sex slut of interest, one whom they might think worth owning, one whom they might not mind having on their chain?"

"You, too, then might have to crawl to men," said the girl, "and to serve them?"

"Yes," said the woman, "and with the same perfection as you, my dear."

"Absurd," said the girl.

"I will doubtless be taken my way, and you yours," she said, "as no more than separate females. I see the thought offends you."

"Yes," said the girl.

"I am sorry," she said. "But I will be owned, as much as you."

"You would have to please a master, as I?" said the girl.

"Yes," she said.

"I cannot believe that," said the girl. "It makes no sense to me."

"Do you think it will be only your fair self, with all its beauty, which will soon be at the bidding of a master?" she asked.

"But you are my mother," she said.

"Surely you must understand that I must have been attractive to at least one man, at least once," she said, and smiled. "Your presence would seem to attest to that."

(pg. 179) "Not necessarily," said the girl.

"True," smiled the woman.

"You are my mother," said the girl.

"Do you think that means my body is now like ice or wood," she asked, "that I am not a human female, that I do not have feelings, that I do not have needs?'

"You cannot have needs," wept the girl. "It is improper. You are my mother!"

"Your father did not much care for me," she said. "Too, I think you, too, took me much for granted, as little more than an object in your environment. I have been terribly lonely."

"You are my mother!" said the girl.

"I am many things," she said, "or have been many things,"

"You cannot have needs," said the girl.

"Look at me," said the woman. "Do you think a woman so bared and chained, so exposed and dominated, cannot have needs? These things free me to have needs. They free me to be myself."

"Disgusting!" said the girl.

"All my life," she said, "I have wanted to kiss, and lick, and serve a man, and make him happy."

"Disgusting!" said the girl.

"Now, perhaps," she said. "I shall have the opportunity to do so."

"I cannot believe you are speaking to me in this fashion," said the girl.

"Look at me," she said. "I have a collar on my neck. I cannot remove it. It attaches me to a chain, with others. I am naked. Men may look upon me as they please. There is a number on my breast. I am 261, among the catches of mercenaries. I will be sold. Do not tell me how I can speak. I am, like you, a woman on a chain!"

"I am afraid, Mother," said the girl, suddenly. "I am so afraid!"

"We are all afraid," she said, holding her.

"I do not know what will happen to me," said the girl.

"None of us do," said the woman.

"I do not want to be owned," wept the girl.

(pg. 180) "Think of it from a man's point of view," she said. "You are quite beautiful. Think of what pleasure men will take in owning you. Think how happy it will make them."

"I would then have value?" asked the girl.

"Yes," said the mother. "In time you might even become a treasure."

"No, no," said the girl, suddenly. "We must never think of things from the man's point of view."

"Why?" asked the woman.

"I do not know!" she said. "But what pleases them, what fulfills them, what makes them so masculine, so powerful and strong, so different from us, must be denied to them!"

"Why?" asked the woman.

"I do not know," wept the girl.

"To make them piteous and weak, so that we may dominate them?" asked the mother.

"I do not know," said the girl.

"So, that we can pretend we are more like them?"

"I do not know," said the girl.

"As a free female you might, if you wished, for whatever purposes, hatred or envy, the seeking of power, or whatever it might be, attempt to do them such hurt, such insidious and grievous injury, but such terrible and grotesque crimes, for which legal penalties are not even prescribed, my lovely daughter, when you are a slave, will not be permitted to you."

"I am afraid to be a slave," she said.

"We all are," said the mother.

"I do not understand slaves," said the girl.

"You understand them only too well," said the mother.

"Why is it that so many of them, owning not even a bowl for their food, or their rags and collars, seem to be among the happiest of women, so radiant and fulfilled?"

"They have masters," she said.

"Mother," said the girl, timorously.

"Yes, my daughter," said the mother, encouragingly.

"This morning, near noon, on the Avenue of Adminius, I was forced to call a man Master."

"So, too, were we all," said the mother, soothingly. "It is (pg. 181) just their way of accustoming us to obedience, and what lies before us."

"There was something else," she whispered.

"Yes," asked the mother.

"I had to kiss a man's whip," she whispered.

"So, too, did we all, I am sure," said the mother, kindly.

"But it is worse," she whispered. "I fear to speak."

"Tell me," said the mother, soothingly, taking the girls head upon her breast.

"I had feelings," said the girl. "I had never felt just those feelings before."

"I understand," said the mother.

"When I felt the stout leather thrust against my lips, I trembled," she said. "Then, as bidden, I kissed, and licked it, lingeringly. I looked up at him. I saw the ferocity, and the strength, and the uncompromising determination, in his eyes. Then, again, I bent to my work. I felt thrilled to the quick. My belly became hot. My thighs flamed. I felt wet."

The mother kissed her, and caressed her hair, softly, soothingly.

"I am a terrible person," said the girl.

"Such feelings are perfectly natural," said the mother. "Do not be ashamed of them. They tell you what you are. It is not wrong to be what you are. It is good to be what you are, exactly what you are, whatever it may be."

"Have you ever had such feelings?" asked the girl.

"Yes," said the mother.

"What can possibly be their meaning?" asked the girl, frightened.

"It is simple," said the mother.

"What?" asked the girl.

"That we are females," said the mother.

"Females?" said the daughter.

"Yes," said the mother. "Such feelings, of need and helplessness, are natural for us. Do not be afraid of them. They tell us what we are."

"Are we-are we slaves, Mother?" asked the girl.

"Hush," said the mother, quickly. "One approaches; a guard."

(pg. 182) Quickly they separated, each looking down. The mother rested now on her right thigh and hip, her hands on the floor of the Semnium, the girl on her left thigh and hip, her hands, too, on the Semnium's floor. They did not lift their heads. They did not wish to risk meeting the eyes of the guard, calling attention to themselves. They looked well in the collars, both affixed to the chain.

The woman near me, on the marble bench, grasped it more tightly. The padlock on her collar moved on the marble. The guard was removing her ankle shackles. He then sat her upright, and unchained her wrists. The ankle chain and wrist chain he left lying over the bench, in front of her. He then took her by the hair and drew her from the bench. He walked her, bent over, to a place on the chain. A second padlock was there, marking what had been her place. He knelt her there, and then opened the padlock on the chain. Without removing it from the chain he pushed its bolt through the ring on her collar and snapped it shut. She was again part of the chain. She lay down on the floor, in her place. The guard looked over the nearby women. None met his eyes. He was the same fellow who, earlier had brought in the newest arrival, bound and leashed, in the Semnium.

"261," he said.

"Please, no," she said.

He regarded her.

"Master," she said, putting her head down.

A young girl, near her, gasped, hearing her mother use this word to a man.

261 was freed from the chain. He sat her on the bench, straddling it.

"Please," she said, "do not. My daughter is near." Then her ankles were shackled, the chain running under the heavy fixed-position bench. Then her wrists were enclosed in the wrist rings, the chain from them, too, running under the bench. He then put her down on the bench. She lay on it, on her stomach, her legs on either side of it. Her throat still wore the padlocked collar. The other padlock, that which had held the collar to the chain, he left on the chain. It marked the place to which she would be returned. He then left her.