  We calculate O(alpha_s) two-loop virtual corrections to the differential
decay width dGamma(B --> X_s l^+ l^-)/ds, where s is the invariant mass squared
of the lepton pair. We also include those contributions from gluon
bremsstrahlung which are needed to cancel infrared and collinear singularities
present in the virtual corrections. Our calculation is restricted to the range
0.05 < s/m_b^2 < 0.25 where the effects from resonances are small. The new
contributions drastically reduce the renormalization scale dependence of
existing results for dGamma(B --> X_s l^+ l^-)/ds. For the corresponding
branching ratio (restricted to the above s-range) the renormalization scale
uncertainty gets reduced from +/- 13% to +/- 6.5%.
