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Return to the Chateau, by Pauline Reage (Story of O Part
II)

Return to the Chateau

ONE DAY A girl in love said to the man she loved:
"I could also write the kind of stories you
like..?"

"Do you really think so?" he answered.

They met two or three times a week, but never during vacations, and never
on weekends. Each of them stole the time they spent together from their
families and their work. On afternoons in January and

=46ebruary when the days begin to grow longer and the sun, sinking in the
west, tints the Seine with red reflections, they used to walk along the on
banks of the river, the quai des Grands Augustins, the quai de la to
Tournelle, kissing in the shadow of the bridges. Once a clochard shouted at
them:

"Shall we take up a collection and rent you a room?"

Their places of refuge often changed. The old car, which the girl drove,
took them to the zoo to see the giraffes, to Bagatelle to see the irises
and the clematis in the spring, or the asters in the fall. She noted the
names of the asters-blue fog, purple, pale pink-and wondered why, since she
was never able to plant them (and yet we shall have further occasion to
refer to asters). But Vincennes, or the Bois de Boulogne, is a long way
away. In the Bois you run into people who know you. Which, of course, left
rented rooms. The same one several times in succession. Or different rooms,
as chance would have it. There is a strange sweetness about the meager
lighting of rented rooms in hotels near railroad stations: the modest
luxury of the double bed, whose linen you leave unmade as you leave the
room, has a charm all its own. And the time comes when you can no longer
separate the sound of words and signs from the endless drone of the motors
and the hiss of the tires climbing the street. For several years, these
furtive and tender halts, in the respite that follows love, legs all
entwined and arm unclasped, had been soothed by the kind of exchanges and
as it were small talk in which books hold the most important place. Books
were their only complete freedom, their common country, their true travels.
Together they dwelt in the books they loved as others in their family home;
in books they had their compatriots and their brothers; poets had written
for them, the letters of lovers from times past came down to them through
the obscurity of ancient languages, of modes and mores long since come and
gone-all of which was read in a toneless voice in an unknown room, the
sordid and miraculous dungeon against which the crowd outside, for a few
short hours, beat in vain. They did not have a full night together. All of
a sudden, at such and such an hour agreed upon ahead of time-the watch a!
ways remained on the wrist-they had to leave Each had to regain his street,