Story of 'O' excerpt

"Nothing however had been of such aid to her as the silence, unless it were the chains. The chains and the silence which ought to have sealed her isolated self within twenty impenetrable walls, to have asphyxiated her, strangled her, hadn't; to the contrary, they'd been her deliverance, liberating her from herself. What might have become of her had speech been accorded her and freedom granted her hands, had the faculty of free will been hers when her lover prostituted her while he looked on? She had spoken, it is true, under torture; but may one designate as words these which are only plaints and screams? Again, they often stilled her with gags. Beneath those stares, beneath those hands, beneath those sexes which raped her, beneath those lashes which tore her, she sank, lost in a delirious absence from herself which gave her unto love and loving, and may perhaps have brought her close to death and dying. She was - who? anyone at all, no-one, someone else...."