art as I am could not be
deceived in that. For ten evenings I've been studying your spiritual
life in your dance, until to-day when you entered as the flower-girl I
became perfectly clear. Yours is a grand nature--unselfish; you can see
no one suffer; you embody the joy of life. As a wife you will make a
man happy above all things.... You are all open-heartedness. You would
be a poor actor. (The bell rings again.)

LULU. (Having somewhat loosened her laces, takes a deep breath and
jingles her spurs.) Now I can breathe again. The curtain is going up.
(She takes from the centre table a skirt-dance costume--of bright
yellow silk, without a waist, closed at the neck, reaching to the
ankles, with wide, loose sleeves--and throws it over her.) I must
dance.

ESCERNY. (Rises and kisses her hand.) Allow me to remain here a little
while longer.

LULU. Please, stay.

ESCERNY. I need some solitude. (Lulu goes out.) What is to be
aristocratic? To be eccentric, like me? Or to be perfect in body and
mind, like this girl? (Applause and bravos outside.) He who gives me
back my faith in men, gives me back my life. Should not the children of
this woman be more princely, body and soul, than the children whose
mother has no more vitality in her than I have felt in me until to-day?
(Sitting, right; ecstatically.) The dance has ennobled her body....
(Alva enters.)

ALVA. One is never sure a moment that some miserable chance may not
throw the whole performance out for good. (He throws himself into the
big chair, left, so that the two men are in exactly reversed positions
from their former ones. Both converse somewhat boredly and
apathetically.)

ESCERNY. But the public has never yet shown itself so grateful.

ALVA. She's finished the skirt-dance.

ESCERNY. I hear her coming....

ALVA. She isn't coming. She has no time. She changes her costume in the
wings.

ESCERNY. She has two ballet-costumes, if I'm not mistaken?

ALVA. I find the white one more becoming to her than the rose.

ESCERNY. Do you?

ALVA. Don't you?

ESCERNY. I find she looks too body-less in the white tulle.

ALVA. I find she looks too animal in the rose-tulle.

ESCERNY. I don't find that.

ALVA. The white tulle expresses more the child-like in her nature.

ESCERNY. The rose tulle expresses more the female in her nature. (The
electric bell rings over the door. Alva jumps up.)

ALVA. For heaven's sake, what is wrong?

ESCERNY. (Getting up too.) What's