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