r shamelessness is balanced with gold for you at every step. One
cries "bravo," another "fie"--it's all the same to you! Can you wish
for a more brilliant triumph than when a respectable girl can hardly be
kept in the box? Has your life any other aim? As long as you still have
a spark of self-respect, you are no perfect dancer. The more terribly
you make people shudder, the higher you stand in your profession!

LULU. But it is absolutely indifferent to me what they think of me. I
don't, in the least, want to be any better than I am. I'm content with
myself.

SCHOEN. (In moral indignation.) That is your true nature. I call that
straightforward! A corruption!!

LULU. I wouldn't have known that I had a spark of self-respect--

SCHOEN. (Suddenly distrustful.) No harlequinading--

LULU. O Lord--I know very well what I'd have become if you hadn't saved
me from it.

SCHOEN. Are you then, perhaps, something different to-day?

LULU. God be thanked, no!

SCHOEN. That is right!

LULU. (Laughs.) And how awfully glad I am about it.

SCHOEN. (Spits.) Will you dance now?

LULU. In anything, before anyone!

SCHOEN. Then down to the stage!

LULU. (Begging like a child.) Just a minute more! Please! I can't stand
up straight yet. They'll ring.

SCHOEN. You have become what you are in spite of everything I sacrificed
for your education and your welfare.

LULU. Had you overrated your ennobling influence?

SCHOEN. Spare me your witticisms.

LULU. The prince was here.

SCHOEN. Well?

LULU. He takes me with him to Africa.

SCHOEN. Africa?

LULU. Why not? Didn't you make me a dancer just so that someone might
come and take me away with him?

SCHOEN. But not to Africa, though!

LULU. Then why didn't you let me fall quietly in a faint, and silently
thank heaven for it?

SCHOEN. Because, more's the pity, I had no reason for believing in your
faint!

LULU. (Making fun of him.) You couldn't bear it any longer out there?

SCHOEN. Because I had to bring home to you what you are and to whom you
are not to look up.

LULU. You were afraid, though, that my legs might have been seriously
injured?

SCHOEN. I know too well you are indestructible.

LULU. So you know that?

SCHOEN. (Bursting out.) Don't look at me so impudently!

LULU. No one is keeping you here.

SCHOEN. I'm going as soon as the bell rings.

LULU. As soon as you have the energy! Where is your energy? You have
been engaged three years. Why don't yo