SCHIGOLCH. So no one can unlock it from outside. RODRIGO. Isn't he at the stock-exchange? LULU. Oh, yes, but he suffers from persecution-mania. RODRIGO. I take him by the feet, and yup!--there he stays sticking to the roof. LULU. He hunts you into a mouse-hole with the corner of his eye. RODRIGO. What does he hunt? Who does he hunt? (Baring his arm.) Just look at this biceps! LULU. Show me. (Goes left.) RODRIGO. (Hitting himself on the muscle.) Granite. Wrought-iron! LULU. (Feeling by turns Rodrigo's arm and her own.) If you only didn't have such long ears-- FERDINAND. (Entering, rear-centre.) Doctor Schön! RODRIGO. The rogue! (Jumps up, starts behind the fire-screen, recoils.) God preserve me! (Hides, lower left, behind the curtains.) SCHIGOLCH. Give me the key! (Takes it and drags himself up the stairs.) LULU. (Hugenberg having slid under the table.) Show him in! HUGENBERG. (Under the front edge of the table-cloth, listening; to himself.) If he doesn't stay--we'll be alone. LULU. (Poking him with her toe.) Sh! (Hugenberg disappears. Alva is shown in by Ferdinand.) ALVA. (In evening dress.) Methinks the matinee will take place with burning lamps. I've-- (Notices Schigolch painfully climbing the stairs.) What the ---- is that? LULU. An old friend of your father's. ALVA. 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 Schön ...? 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.