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body, they seemed to give it a new beauty.
    The last photograph was a logical conclusion. The tortured body of the girl, apparently lifeless, is stretched out on the black and white checkerboard floor. She still wears nothing but the black band across her eyes.
    She is lying on her right side, the upper part of her body half flung back so as to turn her face into the camera. The right arm is stretched the length of her body while the left arm is raised over her head hiding the ear but giving a good view of the downy armpit and the breast.
    The legs are bent, the right one slightly and left much more, the knee pulled way up. From the way the picture was taken and the lighting, one can clearly see the inside of the right thigh, the buttocks, the lower pubic region and all the surrounding tender flesh.
    The amount of blood which gushes from the central wound, flowing onto the upper thigh and the floor on either side of it, gives the impression that the girl has been fatally stabbed, or something of that nature.
    Blood trickles out of her half-opened mouth and down her cheek before dripping to the floor. Apart from this detail the face seems peaceful, almost happy. One might almost think, for a moment, that the mouth is smiling.
    I noted that this photograph was not taken on the same day as the others, or as some of the others. The paint which had spotted the breast could, of course, have been washed off since the previous shot; but missing entirely were the whip marks on the buttocks which do not, naturally, disappear that fast. Perhaps, then, the pictures had been taken in a different order? Or perhaps those charm ing stripes across the skin had just been make-up, like the rest of it?
    I was about to ask Claire when, turning to her, I noticed that she was holding still another photo graph she must have taken from her folder just when I thought the series was finished.
    She handed it to me. Right away I could tell that it was different from the others. The way it was taken, in the first place, was not at all the same, but there were other things. The body was partially cut off by the camera, while before it had always been shown in its entirety. The setting, moreover, was no longer the austere Gothic room but the very room that we were sitting in.
    Thrown back in one of the little armchairs a woman, her nightgown raised to her waist, is caressing the in terior of her cunt.
    Because of the blurred folds of the nightgown one can only distinguish the naked parts: the two arms, the hands, the lower belly, and the opening of the thighs. The legs from the knees down, as well as the head, are not in the picture.
    In the gaping crevice of the thighs the index and the middle fingers of the left hand part the lips on one side, on the other the thumb and little finger of the right hand perform the same function. The fourth finger of this hand is bent back; the index finger touches the tip of the clearly erect clitoris; and, lower, the middle finger readily penetrates the opening up to the middle joint.
    Under the intense lighting the surface of the mucous membranes glistens from its secretions.
    What gave me the final proof were the dark, polished fingernails of those two hands. I remembered that Anne left her fingernails natural. And then something about the whole position, the curve of the arms, every detail of the pose, seemed less abandoned, less pleasurable, and the pubic hair a little darker. I glanced at Claire to ask her if I knew the model she had used this time.
    Her face was no longer the same: somewhat flushed, less cold, visibly troubled. The general effect made her seem infinitely more desirable than she had ever been before. She was wearing a black sweater and fitted pants; thrown back in her chair, as in the photograph, she let her hand wander in the hollow of her thighs.
    The polish on her fingernails was an intense red.
    I realized at once it was a picture of herself that she had shown me. She had probably used an