a grove, and Sir Stephen braked against a high stone wall with a large gate, which was immediately thrown open in front of the car. They drove inside.

Sir Steven immediately stopped the car and, coming out of it first, helped Natalie get out. He demanded that O. left the raincoat and sandals in the cabin, and when she obeyed, he pushed the large wooden door.

Behind the door was some sort of patio, paved with stone slabs and closed between three vaulted arcades. The fourth side of the yard went out to a wide terrace with the same stone slabs. About a dozen couples danced in the courtyard. Some women, dressed in very low-top dresses, and men in short white vests sat at small tables, on which were candlesticks with burning candles. There was a record player on the left, on the right a stand with snacks. But the moonlight, no less bright than the light of candles, beautifully illuminated the entire courtyard, and therefore, when the nude figure that the black-clad Natalie led on the chain appeared in the center of the courtyard, right in the moonlight strip, the men sat up immediately and the dancing couples stopped one by one. The servant standing at the player was alert and turned around. Seeing those who entered the courtyard, he stopped the record.

O. froze in the limelight, Sir Stephen stood two steps behind her. The commander passed to them, pushing the men and women who crowded around O. who took the candles from the tables — to get a better look at it.

- - Who is she? From where Whose woman is this? - - Immediately I heard questions.

“It belongs to the one who wants it,” the Commander answered to everyone at once and led O. and Natalie to the very edge of the courtyard, where there was a stone bench near the bounding wall covered with a blue mattress.

O. immediately sat down, leaning her back on the wall and put her palms on her knees. Natalie, who for a moment did not let the chain out of her hands, settled herself right on the floor at her feet. The commander returned to the people crowded in the center of the courtyard.

O. looked for Sir Stephen. She recognized his figure among the rest, but not immediately: he settled into a lounge chair on the other side, near the terrace itself. O. calmed down: he chose a comfortable place so as not to lose sight of her. They turned on the music again and people began to dance.

The dancers gradually, one couple after another, approached O. as if by chance, but soon they approached without hesitating, and the women were more curious than the men. O. looked at everyone through the slots in the mask, her eyes were wide open, like the bird she was depicting. The illusion of resemblance to an owl was so impressive that it never occurred to anyone to ask her questions. As if she was as mute and deaf to human speech as this bird.

All the time, from midnight until five o'clock in the morning, when the sun had already begun to gild the celestial dome in the east, strangers repeatedly approached her, felt and inspected her body, pulled the chain and brought candelabra from Provencal faience - so close that O. I felt the heat from the brightly lit candles, - to the very thighs, in order to understand how the chain is attached to her body. One drunken American even grabbed her, but he immediately realized that he was holding iron through his flesh in his hand, and immediately sobered up with fright. An expression of disgust and disgust appeared on his face, reminding O. of the girl who had removed her hair.

Another young girl came up in a dress with two tea roses, which she supported at the very waist, a small necklace of pearls around her neck and with small gold-plated sandals. The same young gentleman led the girl by the hand and sat her on the bench to the right of O. and, taking the hand of his girlfriend, forced her to stroke O. chest, trembling from the touch of cold fingers. The girl’s hand touched O.’s belly and the iron ring and the hole into which the ring was driven.The girl obediently did everything that her gentleman wanted, and when he said that she would do the same with her, she did not say a word against it.

But sitting next to O., looking at her as a model at the exhibition, no one said a word to her. Probably, she was so similar to a stone or wax doll, or to a creature that appeared from another world, that no one had guessed it to speak the language of the people. Or they simply did not dare to speak?

It was only when it became quite light that the yard was finally empty and Sir Stephen and the Commander woke Natalie, who had fallen asleep at O.'s feet, and was forced to move O. away and spread out on one of the tables. Taking off her chain and mask, they took it in turn.

* * *

A few days later, Sir Stephen drove O. to Roissy. She was truly happy to be back inside the castle.