Why was Hel fleeing from him? He groped along after her. Climbed up stairs upon stairs. The hastening, frightened footsteps remained constantly before him. And the higher the woman before him fled, the more wildly did his heart beat in this mighty ascent, the redder did Rotwang’s eyes become filled with blood, the more furiously did his anger boil up within him. She should not run away from him—she should not! If only he could catch her by the hand he would never, never let her go again! He would forge a ring about her wrist with his metal hand—and then she should never try to escape him again ... to another! They had both reached the belfry. They raced along under the bells. He blocked the way to the stairs. He laughed, sadly and evilly. “Hel, my Hel, you can no longer escape me!” She made a swift, despairing leap, and hung on the rope of the bell which was called Saint Michael. Saint Michael raised his ore-voice, but it sounded as though broken, complaining wildly. Rotwang’s laughter mingled with the sound of the bell. His metal arm, the marvellous achievement of a genius, stretched, like the phantom arm of a skeleton, far out on the sleeve of his coat, and snatched at the bell-rope. “Hel, my Hel, you can no longer escape me!” The girl staggered back against the breastwork. She looked around. She was trembling like a bird. She could not go down the stairs. Neither could she go any higher. She was trapped. She saw Rotwang’s eyes and saw his hands. And, without hesitation, without reflection, with a ferocity which swept a blaze of scarlet across the pallor of her face, she swung herself out of the belfry window, to hang upon the steel cord of the lightning conductor. “Freder—!!” she screamed. “Help me—!!” Below—far below, near the flaming pyre, lay a trampled creature, his forehead in the dust. But the scream from above smote him so unexpectedly that he shot up, as if under the lash, he sought and he saw— And all those who had been dancing in wild rings around the bonfire of the witch saw, as he—stiffened—petrified: The girl who hung, swallowlike, clinging to the tower of the cathedral, with Rotwang’s hands stretching out towards her. And they all heard how, in the shouted answer: “I am coming, Maria, I am coming—!” there cried out all the relief and all the despair which can fill the heart of a man to whom Heaven and Hell are equally near. CHAPTER XXII Joh Fredersen stood in the dome-room of the New Tower of Babel, waiting for Slim. He was to bring him news of his son.