Free Nomads of Gor by John Norman Page B

her
      might, I gathered, have happened to any of them.
      She remembered arising and washing and dressing, eating a
      hurried breakfast, taking the elevator downstairs from her
      apartment, the subway, arriving at work, the routines of the
      morning as a junior secretary in one of the larger advertising
      agencies on Madison Avenue, her excitement at being invited
      to interview for the position of assistant secretary to the head
      of the art department, her last-minute concern with her
      lipstick, the hem of her yellow shift, then steno pad in hand,
      entering his office..
      With him had been a tall, strange man, broad of shoulder
      with large hands, a grayish face, eyes almost like glass. He
      had frightened her. He wore a dark suit of expensive cloth
      and tailoring, and yet somehow it seemed not that he wore
      it as one accustomed to such garments. He spoke to her,
      rather than the man she knew, the head of the department,
      whom she had seen often. He did not permit her to take the
      seat by the desk.
      Rather he told her to stand and straighten herself. He
      seemed to scorn her posture. Angry, she nevertheless did so
      until, embarrassed, she stood insolently erect before him. His
      eyes regarded her ankles with care, and then her calves and
      she was acutely aware, blushing, that standing as she did, so
      straight before him, the simple yellow, oxford-cloth shift ill
      concealed her thighs, the flatness of her belly, the loveliness
      of her figure. "Lift your head," he said, and she did, her chin
      high, the lovely, angry head set proudly on her aristocratic
      delicate neck.
      He then backed away from her.
      She turned to face him, eyes flashing.
      "Do not speak," he said.
      Her fingers went white with anger, clutching the steno pad
      and pencil.
      He gestured to the far side of the room. "Walk there," he
      said, "and return."
      "I will not," she said.
      "Now," said the man.
      Elizabeth had looked, tears almost in her eyes, at the
      department head, but he seemed suddenly to her soft, pudgy,
      distant, sweating, nothing. He nodded hastily, "Please, Miss
      Cardwell, do as he says."
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      48 NOMADS OF GOR
      Elizabeth faced the tall, strange man. She was breathing
      rapidly now. She felt the pencil clutched in her sweating
      hand. Then it broke.
      "Now," said the man.
      Looking at him she suddenly had the feeling, a strange
      one, that this man, in some circumstances and for some
      purpose or another, had assessed and judged many women.
      This infuriated her.
      It seemed to her a challenge that she would accept. She
      would show him a woman indeed allowing herself for the
      instant to be insolently and fully female showing him in her
      walk her contempt and scorn for him.
      She would then leave and go directly to the personnel
      office, tendering her resignation.
      She threw back her head. "Very well," she said. And
      Elizabeth Cardwell walked proudly, angrily, to the far side of
      the room, wheeled there, faced the man, and approached
      him, eyes taunting, a smile of contempt playing about her
      lips. She heard the department head quickly suck in his
      breath She did not take her eyes from the tall, strange man.
      "Are you satisfied," she asked, quietly, acidly.
      "Yes," he had said.
      She remembered then only turning and starting for the
      door, and a