Free Return to the Chateau by Pauline Réage Page B

Stephen’s hand, her name: O, and the following notations: “Bears irons. Branded. Very sensitive, well-trained mouth.” Below which, underlined: “Should be whipped.”
    “Give me back the photograph,” Anne-Marie said. The same information was fully transcribed on the back of the photo. What it said was nothing more or less than what Sir Stephen had said in O’s presence, in less elegant terms, every time he had turned her over to someone else and even-he had never made any effort to conceal the fact from O-whenever he talked about her to his friends. O learned that two or three photographs of this kind for each girl at Roissy were in the loose-leaf album that anyone in the bar or restaurant could consult.
    “That’s the picture Sir Stephen prefers,” Anne-Marie said. “That one and …” extracting another one from the assortment, “this one.” The second was a pose where O was kneeling, with her skirts hoisted up.
    “What do you mean?” O exclaimed. “You mean Sir Stephen has seen them?”
    “Yes, of course he has,” Anne-Marie said. “He saw them yesterday when he was here. He made out your card while he was here, too.”
    “But when, yesterday?” O wanted to know, her face ashen, feeling the lump in her throat growing and the tears rising. “When? Why didn’t he see me?”
    “Oh, he saw you,” Anne-Marie said. “I went into the library with him yesterday while you were there. You were with the Commander. You and he were the only ones in the room, but we weren’t going to interrupt him.”
    Yesterday, yesterday afternoon in the library, O, on her knees, her blue and green dress hoisted up over her buttocks … She hadn’t moved when the door had opened: the Commander’s member had been in her mouth.
    “Why are you crying, O?” Anne-Marie went on. “He found you very pretty. Stop crying, you little fool.”
    But O could not stem the flow of tears.
    “Why didn’t he call me? Did he leave right after that? What did he do? Why didn’t he say anything to me?” she lamented.
    “Incredible!” Anne-Marie interrupted. “Now you’re making him accountable to you for what he does. I thought he had trained you better. The next time I see him I’ll make sure not to congratulate him on your excellent discipline. What you deserve is . .”
    Anne-Marie broke off. Someone was knocking at her door. The person who came in was the one referred to as the Master of Roissy. Till now, he had scarcely paid any attention to O since her arrival, and had not touched her. But she was probably especially moving, or provocative, in her state of distress and disarray, sitting there pale and naked, her mouth open and trembling. As Anne-Marie ordered her back to her room to get dressed-it was almost three o’clock-he countermanded the order:
    “No,” he said. “Tell her to wait for me outside in the hallway.”

XII
    In the depths of her distress, O was somewhat soothed by a circumstance where it seemed that nothing could be anything but unpleasant to her: the arrival of the pseudoGerman who had already, in Sir Stephen’s presence, possessed her a number of times. To be sure, there was nothing very pleasant about the man. He was a coarse, churlish fellow, who gave the impression of being greedy and supercilious. His language, as well as his hands, could well have been those of a truckdriver. But he said to O, in the bar where he was waiting and to which he had had her summoned, that he had been sent by Sir Stephen and asked her to have dinner with him. At the same time he handed her an envelope. O remembered, her heart skipping a beat, the envelope that she had found on the table in Sir Stephen’s living room the day after the first night she had spent there. She opened it. It was indeed a word from Sir Stephen, asking her to do her best to treat Carl in such a way as to induce him to pay a return visit to Roissy, as he had asked her in the course of their return trip to Paris from the Riviera to seduce him