“Do you think so? I hardly do.”
“Have you actually lost your senses.”
“Possibly. But let me go on. I developed a perfect passion for reading stories in which the extremest cruelties were described. I loved especially to look at pictures and prints which represented them. All the sanguinary tyrants that ever occupied a throne; the inquisitors who had the heretics tortured, roasted, and butchered; all the woman whom the pages of history have recorded as lustful, beautiful, and violent women like Libussa, Lucretia Borgia, Agnes of Hungary, Queen Margot, Isabeau, the Sultana Roxolane, the Russian Czarinas of last century—all these I saw in furs or in robes bordered with ermine.”
“And so furs now rouse strange imaginings in you,” said Wanda, and simultaneously she began to drape her magnificent fur-cloak coquettishly about her, so that the dark shining sable played beautifully around her bust and arms. “Well, how do you feel now, half broken on the wheel?”
Her piercing green eyes rested on me with a peculiar mocking satisfaction. Overcome by desire, I flung myself down before her, and threw my arms about her.
“Yes—you have awakened my dearest dream,” I cried. “It has slept long enough.”
“And this is?” She put her hand on my neck.
I was seized with a sweet intoxication under the influence of this warm little hand and of her regard, which, tenderly searching, fell upon me through her half-closed lids.
“To be the slave of a woman, a beautiful woman, whom I love, whom I worship.”
“And who on that account maltreats you,” interrupted Wanda, laughing.