LULU. (Getting up.) Have you enough? SCHIGOLCH. There's still enough left over to plant a juniper on my grave. I'll find my own way out. (Exit. Lulu follows him, and presently returns with Dr. Schön.) SCHÖN. What's your father doing here? LULU. What's the matter? SCHÖN. If I were your husband that man would never come over my threshold. LULU. You can speak intimately. He's not here. (Referring to Schwarz.) SCHÖN. Thank you, I'd rather not. LULU. I don't understand. SCHÖN. I know that. (Offering her a seat.) I should like to speak with you just on that subject. LULU. (Sitting down uncertainly.) Why didn't you tell me so yesterday, then? SCHÖN. Please, nothing now about yesterday. I did tell you two years ago. LULU. (Nervously.) Oh, yes,--Hm! SCHÖN. Please be kind enough to cease your visits to my house. LULU. May I offer you an elixir-- SCHÖN. Thanks. No elixir. Have you understood me? (Lulu shakes her head.) Good. You have the choice. You force me to the most extreme measures:--either act in accordance with your station-- LULU. Or? SCHÖN. Or--you compel me--I should have to turn to that person who is responsible for your behavior. LULU. What makes you imagine that? SCHÖN. I shall request your husband, himself to watch over your ways. (Lulu rises, goes up the steps, right.) Where are you going? LULU. (Calls thru the curtains.) Walter! SCHÖN. (Springing up.) Are you mad? LULU. (Turning round.) Aha! SCHÖN. I have made the most superhuman 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 Schön's neck.) Why are you still afraid, now that you're at the zenith of your hopes? SCHÖN. 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! SCHÖN. 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. SCHÖN. We shall meet each other nowhere but in the presence of your husband! LULU. You don't believe yourself what you say. SCHÖN. 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. SCHÖN. 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. SCHÖN. 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.