"Severin!"

"Tread me underfoot!" I exclaimed, and flung myself face to the floor before her.

"I hate all this play-acting," said Wanda impatiently.

"Well, then maltreat me seriously."

An uncanny pause.

"Severin, I warn you for the last time," began Wanda.

"If you love me, be cruel towards me," I pleaded with upraised eyes.

"If I love you," repeated Wanda. "Very well!" She stepped back and looked at me with a sombre smile. _"Be then my slave, and know what it means to be delivered into the hands of a woman."_ And at the same moment she gave me a kick.

"How do you like that, slave?"

Then she flourished the whip.

"Get up!"

I was about to rise.

"Not that way," she commanded, "on your knees."

I obeyed, and she began to apply the lash.

The blows fell rapidly and powerfully on my back and arms. Each one cut into my flesh and burned there, but the pains enraptured me. They came from her whom I adored, and for whom I was ready at any hour to lay down my life.

She stopped. "I am beginning to enjoy it," she said, "but enough for to-day. I am beginning to feel a demonic curiosity to see how far your strength goes. I take a cruel joy in seeing you tremble and writhe beneath my whip, and in hearing your groans and wails; I want to go on whipping without pity until you beg for mercy, until you lose your senses. You have awakened dangerous elements in my being.

But now get up."

I seized her hand to press it to my lips.

"What impudence."

She shoved me away with her foot.

"Out of my sight, slave!"

After having spent a feverish night filled with confused dreams, I awoke. Dawn was just beginning to break.

How much of what was hovering in my memory was true; what had I actually experienced and what had I dreamed? That I had been whipped was certain. I can still feel each blow, and count the burning red stripes on my body. And _she_ whipped me. Now I know everything.

My dream has become truth. How does it make me feel? Am I disappointed in the realization of my dream?

No, I am merely somewhat tired, but her cruelty has enraptured me.

Oh, how I love her, adore her! All this cannot express in the remotest way my feeling for her, my complete devotion to her. What happiness to be her slave!

She calls to me from her balcony. I hurry upstairs. She is standing on the threshold, holding out her hand in friendly fashion. "I am ashamed of myself," she says, while I embrace her, and she hides her head against my breast.

"Why?"

"Please try to forget the ugly scene of yesterday," she said with quivering voice, "I have fulfilled your mad wish, now let us be reasonable and happy and love each other, and in a year I will be your wife."

"My mistress," I exclaimed, "and I your slave!"

"Not another word of slavery, cruelty, or the whip," interrupted Wanda. "I shall not grant you any of those favors, none except wearing my fur-jacket; come and help me into it."

The little bronze clock on which stood a cupid who had just shot his bolt struck midnight.

I rose, and wanted to leave.

Wanda said nothing, but embraced me and drew me back on the ottoman.

She began to kiss me anew, and this silent language was so comprehensible, so convincing--

And it told me more than I dared to understand.

A languid abandonment pervaded Wanda's entire being. What a voluptuous softness there was in the gloaming of her half-closed eyes, in the red flood of her hair which shimmered faintly under the white powder, in the red and white satin which crackled about her with every movement, in the swelling ermine of the _kazabaika_ in which she carelessly nestled.

"Please," I stammered, "but you will be angry with me."

"Do with me what you will," she whispered.

"Well, then whip me, or I shall go mad."

"Haven't I forbidden you," said Wanda sternly, "but you are incorrigible."

"Oh, I am so terribly in love." I had sunken on my knees, and was burying my glowing face in her lap.

"I really believe," said Wanda thoughtfully, "that your madness is nothing but a demonic, unsatisfied sensuality. _Our unnatural way of life must generate such illnesses._ Were you less virtuous, you would be completely sane."

"Well then, make me sane," I murmured. My hands were running through her hair and playing tremblingly with the gleaming fur, which rose and fell like a moonlit wave upon her heaving bosom, and drove all my senses into confusion.

And I kissed her. No, she kissed me savagely, pitilessly, as if she wanted to slay me with her kisses. I was as in a delirium, and had long since lost my reason, but now I, too, was breathless. I sought to free myself.

"What is the matter?" asked Wanda.

"I am suffering agonies."

"You are suffering--" she broke out into a loud amused laughter.