Wholly unknown to me.

LULU. They were in the campaign together. He's awfully badly--

ALVA. Is my father here then?

LULU. He drank a glass with him. He had to go to the stock market.
We'll have lunch before we go, won't we?

ALVA. When does it begin?

LULU. After two. (Alva still follows Schigolch with his eyes.) How do
you like me? (Schigolch disappears thru the gallery.)

ALVA. Had I not better be silent to you on that point?

LULU. I only mean my appearance.

ALVA. Your dressmaker manifestly knows you better than I may permit
myself to know you.

LULU. When I saw myself in the glass I could have wished to be a
man--my man!--

ALVA. You seem to envy your man the joy you offer to him. (Lulu is at
the right, Alva at the left, of the centre table. He regards her with
shy satisfaction. Ferdinand enters, rear, covers the table and lays two
plates, etc., a bottle of Pommery, and hors d' oeuvres.) Have you a
toothache?

LULU. (Across to Alva.) Don't.

FERDINAND. Doctor Schoen ...?

ALVA. He seems so puckered-up and tearful to-day.

FERDINAND. (Thru his teeth.) One is only a man after all. (Exit.)

LULU. (When both are seated.) What I always think most highly of in you
is your firmness of character. You're so perfectly sure of yourself.
Even when you must have been afraid of quarreling with your father
about it, you always stood up for me like a brother just the same.

ALVA. Let's drop that. It's just my fate-- (Moves to lift up the
table-cloth in front.)

LULU. (Quickly.) That was me.

ALVA. Impossible! It's just my fate, with the most frivolous ideas
always to seize on the best.

LULU. You deceive yourself if you make yourself out worse than you are.

ALVA. Why do you flatter me so? It is true that perhaps there is no man
living, so bad as I--who has brought about so much good.

LULU. In any case you're the only man in the world who's protected me
without lowering me in my own eyes!

ALVA. Do you think that so easy? (Schoen appears in the gallery
cautiously parting the hangings between the middle pillars. He starts,
and whispers, "My own son!") With gifts from God like yours, one turns
those around one to criminals without ever dreaming of it. I, too, am
only flesh and blood, and if we hadn't grown up with each other like
brother and sister--

LULU. That's why, too, I give myself to you alone quite without
reserve. From you I have nothing to fear.

ALVA. I assure you there are moments when