I sensed her turn toward me in the darkness. "But, you see," she said, "I must serve you whether I am touched or not. And that, too, in a way you may have difficulty understanding, I find very meaningful, very thrilling."
"You respond then, not only to my touch but also to the very condition of slavery itself?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, "but I would prefer to think of it as responding not so much to the condition of being a slave as to the clear and incontrovertible fact that I am a slave. I think that is it, that that is my reality, that I am a slave."
"That you find thrilling in itself?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, "to be will-lessly at the mercy of another, his helpless slave."