LULU. For you, to take her with you. RODRIGO. Then give her my regards, and she can jump into the water. LULU. She'll lend me twenty thousand marks to save me from destruction if you will preserve her from it herself. If you'll take her off to-night, I'll deposit twenty thousand marks to-morrow in your name at any bank you say. RODRIGO. And if I don't take her off with me? LULU. Denounce me! Alva and I are dead broke. RODRIGO. Devil and damnation! LULU. You make four people happy if you don't take things too exactly and sacrifice yourself for a beneficent purpose. RODRIGO. That won't go; I know that, beforehand. I've tried that out enough now. Who counts on an honorable soul like that in a bag o' bones! What the person had for me was her being an aristocrat. My behavior was as gentleman-like, and more, as you could find among German circus-people. If I'd only just pinched her in the calves once! LULU. (_Watchfully._) She is still a virgin. RODRIGO. (_Sighing._) If there's a God in heaven, you'll get paid for your jokes some day! I prophesy that. LULU. Geschwitz waits. What shall I tell her? RODRIGO. My very best wishes, and I am perverse. LULU. I will deliver that. RODRIGO. Wait a sec. Is it certain sure I get twenty thousand marks from her? LULU. Ask herself! RODRIGO. Then tell her I'm ready. I await her in the dining-room. I must just first look after a barrel of caviare. (_Exit, left. Lulu opens the rear door and calls in a clear voice "Martha!" Countess Geschwitz enters, closing the door behind her._) LULU. (_Pleased._) Dear heart, you can save me from death to-night. GESCHWITZ. How? LULU. By going to a certain house with the acrobat. GESCHWITZ. What for, dear? LULU. He says you must belong to him this very night or he'll denounce me to-morrow. GESCHWITZ. You know I can't belong to any man. My fate has not permitted that. LULU. If you don't please him, that's his own fix. Why has he fallen in love with you? GESCHWITZ. But he'll get as brutal as a hangman. He'll revenge himself for his disappointment and beat my head in. I've been thru that already.... Can you not possibly spare me this hardest test? LULU. What will you gain by his denouncing me? GESCHWITZ. I have still enough of my fortune to take us to America together in the steerage. There you'd be safe from all your pursuers. LULU. (_Pleased and gay._) I want to stay here. I can never be happy in any other city. You must tell him that you can't live without him. Then he'll feel flattered and be gentle as a lamb. You must pay the coachman, too: give him this paper with the address on it. 376 is a sixth-class hotel where they're expecting you with him this evening. GESCHWITZ. (_Shuddering._) How can such a monstrosity save your life? I don't understand that. You have conjured up to torture me the most terrible fate that can fall upon outlawed me! LULU. (_Watchful._) Perhaps the encounter will cure you.