“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 passion. “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.