"I have given up the idea of finding a place in the city," Wanda continued. "It will be difficult to find an entire floor which is shut off and where you can do as you please. In such a strange, mad relationship as ours there must be no jarring note. I shall rent an entire villa--and you will be surprised. You have my permission now to satisfy your hunger, and look about a bit in Florence. I won't be home till evening. If I need you then, I will have you called."

I looked at the Duomo, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Logia di Lanzi, and then I stood for a long time on the banks of the Arno. Again and again I let my eyes rest on the magnificent ancient Florence, whose round cupolas and towers were drawn in soft lines against the blue, cloudless sky. I watched its splendid bridges beneath whose wide arches the lively waves of the beautiful, yellow river ran, and the green hills which surrounded the city, bearing slender cypresses and extensive buildings, palaces and monasteries.

It is a different world, this one in which we are--a gay, sensuous, smiling world. The landscape too has nothing of the seriousness and somberness of ours. It is a long ways off to the last white villas scattered among the pale green of the mountains, and yet there isn't a spot that isn't bright with sunlight. The people are less serious than we; perhaps, they think less, but they all look as though they were happy.

It is also maintained that death is easier in the South.

I have a vague feeling now that such a thing as beauty without thorn and love of the senses without torment does exist.

Wanda has discovered a delightful little villa and rented it for the winter. It is situated on a charming hill on the left bank of the Arno, opposite the Cascine. It is surrounded by an attractive garden with lovely paths, gra.s.s plots, and magnificent meadow of camelias.

It is only two stories high, quadrangular in the Italian fashion. An open gallery runs along one side, a sort of loggia with plaster-casts of antique statues; stone steps lead from it down into the garden.

From the gallery you enter a bath with a magnificent marble basin, from which winding stairs lead to my mistress' bed-chamber.

Wanda occupies the second story by herself.

A room on the ground floor has been a.s.signed to me; it is very attractive, and even has a fireplace.

I have roamed through the garden. On a round hillock I discovered a little temple, but I found its door locked. However, there is a c.h.i.n.k in the door and when I glue my eye to it, I see the G.o.ddess of love on a white pedestal.

A slight shudder pa.s.ses over me. It seems to me as if she were smiling at me saying: "Are you there? I have been expecting you."

It is evening. An attractive maid brings me orders to appear before my mistress. I ascend the wide marble stairs, pa.s.s through the anteroom, a large salon furnished with extravagant magnificence, and knock at the door of the bedroom. I knock very softly for the luxury displayed everywhere intimidates me. Consequently no one hears me, and I stand for some time in front of the door. I have a feeling as if I were standing before the bed-room of the great Catherine, and it seems as if at any moment she might come out in her green sleeping furs, with the red ribbon and decoration on her bare breast, and with her little white powdered curls.

I knocked again. Wanda impatiently pulls the door open.

"Why so late?" she asks.

"I was standing in front of the door, but you didn't hear me knock,"

I reply timidly. She closes the door, and clinging to me, she leads me to the red damask ottoman on which she had been resting. The entire arrangement of the room is in red damask--wall-paper, curtains, portieres, hangings of the bed. A magnificent painting of Samson and Delilah forms the ceiling.

Wanda receives me in an intoxicating dishabille. Her white satin dress flows gracefully and picturesquely down her slender body, leaving her arms and breast bare, and carelessly they nestle amid the dark hair of the great fur of sable, lined with green velvet. Her red hair falls down her back as far as the hips, only half held by strings of black pearls.

"Venus in Furs," I whisper, while she draws me to her breast and threatens to stifle me with her kisses. Then I no longer speak and neither do I think; everything is drowned out in an ocean of unimagined bliss.

"Do you still love me?" she asks, her eye softening in pa.s.sionate tenderness.

"You ask!" I exclaimed.

"You still remember your oath," she continued with an alluring smile, "now that everything is prepared, everything in readiness, I ask you once more, is it still your serious wish to become my slave?"

"Am I not ready?" I asked in surprise.

"You have not yet signed the papers."

"Papers--what papers?"

"Oh, I see, you want to give it up," she said, "well then, we will let it go."

"But Wanda," I said, "you know that nothing gives me greater happiness than to serve you, to be your slave. I would give everything for the sake of feeling myself wholly in your power, even unto death--"

"How beautiful you are," she whispered, "when you speak so enthusiastically, so pa.s.sionately. I am more in love with you than ever and you want me to be dominant, stern, and cruel. I am afraid, it will be impossible for me to be so."

"I am not afraid," I replied smiling, "where are the papers?'"

"So that you may know what it means to be absolutely in my power, I have drafted a second agreement in which you declare that you have decided to kill yourself. In that way I can even kill you, if I so desire."

"Give them to me."

While I was unfolding the doc.u.ments and reading them, Wanda got pen and ink. She then sat down beside me with her arm about my neck, and looked over my shoulder at the paper.

The first one read:

AGREEMENT BETWEEN MME. VON DUNAJEW AND SEVERIN VON KUSIEMSKI

"Severin von Kusiemski ceases with the present day being the affianced of Mme. Wanda von Dunajew, and renounces all the rights appertaining thereunto; he on the contrary binds himself on his word of honor as a man and n.o.bleman, that hereafter he will be her _slave_ until such time that she herself sets him at liberty again.

"As the slave of Mme. von Dunajew he is to bear the name Gregor, and he is unconditionally to comply with every one of her wishes, and to obey every one of her commands; he is always to be submissive to his mistress, and is to consider her every sign of favor as an extraordinary mercy.

"Mme. von Dunajew is ent.i.tled not only to punish her slave as she deems best, even for the slightest inadvertence or fault, but also is herewith given the right to torture him as the mood may seize her or merely for the sake of whiling away the time. Should she so desire, she may kill him whenever she wishes; in short, he is her unrestricted property.

"Should Mme. von Dunajew ever set her slave at liberty, Severin von Kusiemski agrees to forget everything that he has experienced or suffered as her slave, and promises _never under any circ.u.mstances and in no wise to think of vengeance or retaliation_.

"Mme. von Dunajew on her behalf agrees as his mistress to appear as often as possible in her furs, especially when she purposes some cruelty toward her slave."

Appended at the bottom of the agreement was the date of the present day.

The second doc.u.ment contained only a few words.

"Having since many years become weary of existence and its illusions, I have of my own free will put an end to my worthless life."

I was seized with a deep horror when I had finished. There was still time, I could still withdraw, but the madness of pa.s.sion and the sight of the beautiful woman that lay all relaxed against my shoulder carried me away.

"This one you will have to copy, Severin," said Wanda, indicating the second doc.u.ment. "It has to be entirely in your own handwriting; this, of course, isn't necessary in the case of the agreement."

I quickly copied the few lines in which I designated myself a suicide, and handed them to Wanda. She read them, and put them on the table with a smile.

"Now have you the courage to sign it?" she asked with a crafty smile, inclining her head.

I took the pen.

"Let me sign first," said Wanda, "your hand is trembling, are you afraid of the happiness that is to be yours?"

She took the agreement and pen. While engaging in my internal struggle, I looked upward for a moment. It occurred to me that the painting on the ceiling, like many of those of the Italian and Dutch schools, was utterly unhistorical, but this very fact gave it a strange mood which had an almost uncanny effect on me. Delilah, an opulent woman with flaming red hair, lay extended, half-disrobed, in a dark fur-cloak, upon a red ottoman, and bent smiling over Samson who had been overthrown and bound by the Philistines. Her smile in its mocking coquetry was full of a diabolical cruelty; her eyes, half-closed, met Samson's, and his with a last look of insane pa.s.sion cling to hers, for already one of his enemies is kneeling on his breast with the red-hot iron to blind him.

"Now--" said Wanda. "Why you are all lost in thought. What is the matter with you, everything will remain just as it was, even after you have signed, don't you know me yet, dear heart?"

I looked at the agreement. Her name was written there in bold letters. I peered once more into her eyes with their potent magic, then I took the pen and quickly signed the agreement.