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When the party of three, the handsome fellow, and his two companions, were within a few yards of her, she rose lightly, gracefully, to her feet. They noted this movement, of course, and doubtless had observed her earlier. Certainly it is difficult for a kneeling slave, and one of such beauty, as they could now detect, even given the mixtures of light and shadow beneath the trellises, to be ignored. Their eyes met, and then she lowered her head, humbly. This contact, however, brief as it was, gave them to halt. In it she had conveyed to them that she had been waiting for them, and would approach. The two fellows with the handsome slave looked to one another. This girl who had been waiting was a state slave. Could she bear a message from someone in the Central Cylinder, say, from one of the many free women in the entourage of even the Ubara? Too, they may have remembered her from the theater, and from Aulus. Certainly the slave had bided her time discreetly. Could something sensitive be afoot? There were few about. The street was muchly deserted. The market was closed. The day was hot, even under the trellises. I lounged against a wall, several yards away, near a doorway. I did not think it would be easy to pick me out, even if one were interested in doing so, given the variegated patterns of light and shade, and the dangling vines. Too, between us, here and there, were some of the posts supporting the overhead trelliswork. The fellow said something to them. The two men immediately drew back. That interested me. It seemed that no official note was to be taken of this encounter, or, at least, that its content was to be accorded the delicacy of privity, at least in theory.
I watched the girl approach the slave.
She approached with rapid, small steps, her head down, her hands to the side, slightly extended, palms back. When near him she lifted her head slightly, hardly daring to meet his eyes, and then she knelt before him, as before a master, doing obeisance onto him, her head down to the stones before his golden sandals, the palms of her hands, too, on the stones. This was not appropriate, of course, even though both were slaves, as she was female and he male, and the obeisance thus, manifested in this instance in the persons of slaves, might be regarded simply as that of that of femaleness to maleness. The perfect obeisance, of course, the natural obeisance was that it seemed so perfectly to exemplify that of the female slave, literally that of the slave to her master, though it was performed before a male who was not only not her master, but himself a slave. That I found of interest. Did she think he owned her? Too, she did not have to perform such an obeisance in this context. It was not, for example, required by custom or prescribed by ordinance. Too, as he did not own her nor expect to encounter her he would not have had an opportunity to specify certain details of her relationship with him, for example, his preferences with respect to her ma
Lavinia looked up at him, tears in her eyes. He then, I think, from his reaction, clearly recognized her, well recollecting her once a free female, whom he, as a seduction slave, had entrapped for his master, Appanius. He seemed stu
She slowly moved to her knees again, her head down, licking and kissing, and then, her knees under her, she began to raise her ministrations to his shins and calves. She looked up at him, again. It seemed he could not move, so stu
At this point Lavinia swiftly knelt, her knees in proper position, that of the female slave who is used also for the pleasure of men, reach to her tunic, and from within it, from where she had concealed it, from where it rested, at her bosom, withdrew the note which she then held, her arm extended, to the handsome fellow. One of the other two strode forward to seize the not but Lavinia drew it back, clutched in her tiny fist, held it to her body, and shook her head vigorously, negatively. This note, it seemed, was to be delivered to the slave alone. The fellow reached for it again and she put down her head to the stones, rather as in common obeisance or in kneeling to the whip, holding the note beneath her. "No, Master!" she said. "Forgive me, Master!"
"Slut!" he cried, and kicked her, again.