“Won’t you smile just once?” he asked. “Won’t you cry just once? I need them both—your smile and your tears.... Your image, Maria, just as you are now, is burnt into my retina, never to be lost.... I could take a diploma in your horror and in your rigidity. The bitter expression of contempt about your mouth is every bit as familiar to me as the haughtiness of your eyebrows and your temples. But I need your smile and your tears, Maria. Or you will make me bungle my work....” He seemed to have spoken to the deaf air. The girl sat dumb, looking over and beyond him. Rotwang took a chair; he sat down astride it, crossed his arms over the back and looked at the girl. He laughed gloomily. “You two poor children!” he said, “to have dared to pit yourselves against Joh Fredersen! Nobody can reproach you for it; you do not know him and do not know what you are doing. But the son should know the father. I do not believe that there is one man who can boast ever having got the better of Joh Fredersen. You could more easily bend to your will the inscrutable God, who is said to rule the world, than Joh Fredersen....” The girl sat like a statue, immovable. “What will you do, Maria, if Joh Fredersen takes you and your love so seriously that he comes to you and says: ‘Give me back my son!’” The girl sat like a statue, immovable. “He will ask you: ‘Of what value is my son to you?’ and if you are wise you will answer him: ‘Of no more and of no less value than he is to you!...’ He will pay the price, and it will be a high price, for Joh Fredersen has only one son....” The girl sat like a statue, immovable. “What do you know of Freder’s heart?” continued the man. “He is as young as the morning at sunrise. This heart of the young morning is yours. Where will it be at midday? And where at evening? Far away from you, Maria—far, far, away. The world is very large and the earth is very fair.... His father will send him around the world. Out over the beautiful earth he will forget you, Maria, before the clock of his heart is at midday.” The girl sat like a statue, immovable. But around her pale mouth, which was like the bud of a snowrose, a smile began to bloom—a smile of such sweetness, of such depths, that it seemed as though the air about the girl must begin to beam. The man looked at the girl. His lonely eyes were starved and parched as the desert which does not know the dew. In a hoarse voice he went on: