thruout the dialog. Alva, behind the card-table, gets up, a
bill in his hand, and comes into the salon._)

ALVA. (_To Lulu._) Brilliantly! It's going brilliantly! Geschwitz is
wagering her last shirt. Puntschu has promised me ten more
Jungfrau-shares. Steinherz is making her little gains and profits.
(_Exit, lower right._)

LULU. I in a bordell?--(_She reads the paper she holds, and laughs
madly._)

ALVA. (_Coming back with a cash-box in his hand._) Aren't you going
to play, too?

LULU. Oh, yes, surely--why not?

ALVA. By the way, it's in the Berliner Tageblatt to-day that Alfred
Hugenberg has hurled himself over the stairs in prison.

LULU. Is he too in prison?

ALVA. Only in a sort of house of detention. (_Exit, rear. Lulu is
about to follow, but Countess Geschwitz meets her in the door-way._)

GESCHWITZ. You are going because I come?

LULU. (_Resolutely._) No, God knows. But when you come then I go.

GESCHWITZ. You have defrauded me of all the good things of this world
that I still possessed. You might at the very least preserve the
outward forms of politeness in your intercourse with me.

LULU. (_As before._) I am as polite to you as to any other woman. I
only beg you to be equally so to me.

GESCHWITZ. Have you forgotten the passionate endearments by which,
while we lay together in the hospital, you seduced me into letting
myself be locked into prison for you?

LULU. Well, why else did you bring me down with the cholera
beforehand? I swore very different things to myself, even while it
was going on, from what I had to promise you! I am shaken with horror
at the thought that that should ever become reality!

GESCHWITZ. Then you cheated me consciously, deliberately?

LULU. (_Gaily._) What have you been cheated of, then? Your physical
advantages have found so enthusiastic an admirer here, that I ask
myself if I won't have to give piano lessons once more, to keep
alive! No seventeen-year-old child could make a man madder with love
than you, a pervert, are making him, poor fellow, by your
shrewishness.

GESCHWITZ. Of whom are you speaking? I don't understand a word.

LULU. (_As before._) I'm speaking of your acrobat, of Rodrigo Quast.
He's an athlete: he balances two saddled cavalry horses on his chest.
Can a woman desire anything more glorious? He told me just now that
he'd jump into the water to-night if you did not take pity on him.

GESCHWITZ. I do not envy you this cleverness with which you t