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the heavy bootlike sandals that I had noted before.
    These, with their heavy thongs, or cords, came high on the calf. This footwear somehow frightened me. It seemed to have a look of menace or brutality.
    I was unutterably relieved that he was not looking at me.
    I had never seen such a man!
    I had not known such a man could exist!
    I did not know what I could do, or would do, if he so much as looked at me. I wondered, though I attempted to prevent the thought from occurring, sensing its immediate and inevitable appearance, what it might be to be in his arms. I tried to put such a thought from me, to banish it to the secret depths from which it had emerged, but I could not do so. It was more powerful than I. It was irresistible. I shuddered. I knew that, in his arms, I would be utterly helpless.
    Indeed, if he had even so much as looked upon me, I feared I might have begun to whimper, beggingly. Could this be I? What was I? What had been done to me? How was it that I could be so transformed, and so helpless, given merely the sight of such a man? But then, frightened, I looked wildly ahead, and about. So, too, it seemed, were the others. I looked at the other men. Again I gasped, startled. Again I was shocked.
    Again I could not believe What I saw. The fellow before me was not unusual, it seemed, though, given my previous acquaintance with men, surely I would have thought him quite unusual, if not unique.
    The other men, too, in their way, were strong, handsome fellows, and that, too, in an almost indefinable, powerful masculine way. This much disturbed me. They were dressed similarly to the fellow near me. They, too, wore tunics, some of them sleeveless, and, invariably, the same sort of sandals, sandals which might have withstood marches. Where was I, I wondered, that such men could exist? Again I looked up at the man near me.
    Then, suddenly, he looked down, at me.
    I averted my eyes, in terror.
    Never before anything had I felt myself so much what, irreducibly, now undeniably, I was.
    I trembled.
    It might have been not a man, but a beast or a god, or an animal, a cougar, or a lion, in human form.
    The only relation in which I could stand to such a thing was clear to me.
    Some other men passed by me, going to one part of the line or another.
    Some of them carried leather quirts. Others carried whips.
    They then began, along the line, and behind me, to talk to us. They did so quietly, soothingly.
    The fellow near me crouched down beside me. He turned my head, gently, to face him. I looked into his eyes. He put his left hand behind the back of my neck, over the metal collar, and the fingers of his right hand lightly over my lips. I was not to speak.
    "You have no name," he informed me.
    I did not understand this, but his fingers were lightly over my lips.
    He then stood up, and looked down at me. My eyes were lifted to his.
    "Do you wish to be fed?" he asked. I looked up at him, frightened.
    "You may speak," he said.
    "Yes," I whispered.
    "Do you wish to live?" he asked.
    "Yes," I said.
    Then he looked at me, frankly, appraisingly, unabashedly. I had never been looked at like that in my life.
    It seemed he would regard every inch of me.
    I could not even understand such a look.
    Or did something in me understand it only too well? Suddenly, piteously, I rose up from my heels, and, still kneeling, of course, lifted my hands to him. Tears coursed from my eyes. I wept.
    I could not control myself. I could scarcely speak. But he seemed kind.
    He must understand. I knelt before him, in helpless petition. "Mercy," I wept. "I pray you for mercy!" I clasped my hands together, praying him for mercy. I lifted my hands to him thusly clasped, in desperate prayer, piteously. "Please!" I wept. "Please!”
    He looked down at me.
    "Please, I beg you," I wept. "Mercy! I beg mercy! Show me mercy! I beg it! I beg it!”
    His expression did not change.
    Then I felt unutterably stupid. I put down my hands, and my head. I sank back to my heels, my