"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 press my lips to her stocking foot.
"What impudence."
She shoved me away with her foot.
"Out of my sight, slave!"
- Venus in Furs
