erhuman efforts to raise you in society.
You can be ten times as proud of your name as of your intimacy with me.

LULU. (Comes down the steps and puts her arm around Schoen's neck.) Why
are you still afraid, now that you're at the zenith of your hopes?

SCHOEN. No comedy! The zenith of my hopes? I am at last engaged: I have
now the hope of bringing my bride into a clean house.

LULU. (Sitting.) She has developed delightfully in the two years!

SCHOEN. She no longer looks thru one so earnestly.

LULU. She is now, for the first time, a woman. We can meet each other
wherever it seems suitable to you.

SCHOEN. We shall meet each other nowhere but in the presence of your
husband!

LULU. You don't believe yourself what you say.

SCHOEN. Then =he= must believe it. Go on and call him! Thru his marriage
to you, thru all that I've done for him, he has become my friend.

LULU. (Rising.) Mine, too.

SCHOEN. Then I'll cut down the sword over my head.

LULU. You have, indeed, chained me up. But I owe my happiness to you.
You will get friends by the crowd as soon as you have a pretty young
wife again.

SCHOEN. You judge women by yourself! He's got the sense of a child or he
would have tracked out your doublings and windings long ago.

LULU. I only wish he would! Then, at last he'd get out of his
swaddling-clothes. He puts his trust in the marriage contract he has in
his pocket. Trouble is past and gone. One can now give oneself and let
oneself go as if one were at home. That isn't the sense of a =child=!
It's banal! He has no education; he sees nothing; he sees neither me
nor himself; he is blind, blind, blind....

SCHOEN. (Half to himself.) When =his= eyes open!!

LULU. Open his eyes for him! I'm going to ruin. I'm neglecting myself.
He doesn't know me at all. What am I to him? He calls me darling and
little devil. He would say the same to any piano-teacher. He makes no
pretensions. Everything is alright, to him. That comes from his never
in his life having felt the need of intercourse with women.

SCHOEN. If that's true!

LULU. He admits it perfectly openly.

SCHOEN. A man who has painted them, rags and tags and velvet gowns,
since he was fourteen.

LULU. Women make him anxious. He trembles for his health and comfort.
But he isn't afraid of =me=!

SCHOEN. How many girls would deem themselves God knows how blessed in
your situation.

LULU. (Softly pleading.) Seduce him. Corrupt him. You know how. Take
him i