"Oh Severin," she cried out joyously. "I have been impatiently waiting for you." She leaped up, and folded me in her arms. She sat down again on the rich cushions and tried to draw me down to her side, but I softly slid down to her feet and placed my head in her lap.

"Do you know I am very much in love with you to-day?" she whispered, brushing a few stray hairs from my forehead and kissing my eyes.

"How beautiful your eyes are, I have always loved them as the best of you, but to-day they fairly intoxicate me. I am all--" She extended her magnificent limbs and tenderly looked at me from beneath her red lashes.

"And you--you are cold--you hold me like a block of wood; wait, I'll stir you with the fire of love," she said, and again clung fawningly and caressingly to my lips.

"I no longer please you; I suppose I'll have to be cruel to you again, evidently I have been too kind to you to-day. Do you know, you little fool, what I shall do, I shall whip you for a while--"

"But child--"

"I want to."

"Wanda!"

"Come, let me bind you," she continued, and ran gaily through the room. "I want to see you very much in love, do you understand? Here are the ropes. I wonder if I can still do it?"

She began with fettering my feet and then she tied my hands behind my back, pinioning my arms like those of a prisoner.

"So," she said, with gay eagerness. "Can you still move?"

"No."

"Fine--"

She then tied a noose in a stout rope, threw it over my head, and let it slip down as far as the hips. She drew it tight, and bound me to a pillar.

A curious tremor seized me at that moment.

"I have a feeling as if I were about to be executed," I said with a low voice.

"Well, you shall have a thorough punishment to-day," exclaimed Wanda.

"But put on your fur-jacket, please," I said.

"I shall gladly give you that pleasure," she replied. She got her _kazabaika_, and put it on. Then she stood in front of me with her arms folded across her chest, and looked at me out of half-closed eyes.

"Do you remember the story of the ox of Dionysius?" she asked.

"I remember it only vaguely, what about it?"

"A courtier invented a new implement of torture for the Tyrant of Syracuse. It was an iron ox in which those condemned to death were to be shut, and then pushed into a mighty furnace.

"As soon as the iron ox began to get hot, and the condemned person began to cry out in his torment, his wails sounded like the bellowing of an ox.

"Dionysius nodded graciously to the inventor, and to put his invention to an immediate test had him shut up in the iron ox.

"It is a very instructive story.

"It was you who innoculated me with selfishness, pride, and cruelty, and _you shall be their first victim._ I now literally enjoy having a human being that thinks and feels and desires like myself in my power; I love to abuse a man who is stronger in intelligence and body than I, especially a man who loves me.

"Do you still love me?"

"Even to madness," I exclaimed.

"So much the better," she replied, "and so much the more will you enjoy what I am about to do with you now."

"What is the matter with you?" I asked. "I don't understand you, there is a gleam of real cruelty in your eyes to-day, and you are strangely beautiful--completely _Venus in Furs."_

Without replying Wanda placed her arms around my neck and kissed me.

I was again seized by my fanatical pa.s.sion.

"Where is the whip?" I asked.

Wanda laughed, and withdrew a couple of steps.

"You really insist upon being punished?" she exclaimed, proudly tossing back her head.

"Yes."

Suddenly Wanda's face was completely transformed. It was as if disfigured by rage; for a moment she seemed even ugly to me.

"Very well, then _you_ whip him!" she called loudly.

At the same instant the beautiful Greek stuck his head of black curls through the curtains of her four-poster bed. At first I was speechless, petrified. There was a horribly comic element in the situation. I would have laughed aloud, had not my position been at the same time so terribly cruel and humiliating.

It went beyond anything I had imagined. A cold shudder ran down my back, when my rival stepped from the bed in his riding boots, his tight-fitting white breeches, and his short velvet jacket, and I saw his athletic limbs.

"You are indeed cruel," he said, turning to Wanda.

"Only inordinately fond of pleasure," she replied with a wild sort of humor. "Pleasure alone lends value to existence; whoever enjoys does not easily part from life, whoever suffers or is needy meets death like a friend.

"But whoever wants to enjoy must take life gaily in the sense of the ancient world; he dare not hesitate to enjoy at the expense of others; he must never feel pity; he must be ready to harness others to his carriage or his plough as though they were animals. He must know how to make slaves of men who feel and would enjoy as he does, and use them for his service and pleasure without remorse. It is not his affair whether they like it, or whether they go to rack and ruin. He must always remember this, that if they had him in their power, as he has them they would act in exactly the same way, and he would have to pay for their pleasure with his sweat and blood and soul. That was the world of the ancients: pleasure and cruelty, liberty and slavery went hand in hand.

People who want to live like the G.o.ds of Olympus must of necessity have slaves whom they can toss into their fish-ponds, and gladiators who will do battle, the while they banquet, and they must not mind if by chance a bit of blood bespatters them."

Her words brought back my complete self-possession.

"Unloosen me!" I exclaimed angrily.

"Aren't you my slave, my property?" replied Wanda. "Do you want me to show you the agreement?"

"Untie me!" I threatened, "otherwise--" I tugged at the ropes.

"Can he tear himself free?" she asked. "He has threatened to kill me."

"Be entirely at ease," said the Greek, testing my fetters.

"I shall call for help," I began again.