He tripped over my arm. I lay senseless in the snow in the street.----That's how I went with him. For fourteen days I didn't leave his lodgings----a dreadful time! In the morning I had to throw on his Persian nightgown and in the evening go about the room in the black costume of a page; white lace ruffles at my neck, my knees and my wrists. Every day he photographed me in some new arrangement----once on the sofa as Ariadne, once as Leda, once as Ganymede, once on all fours as a feminine Nebuchadnezzar. Then he longed for murder, for shooting, suicide and coal gas. Early in the morning he brought a pistol into bed, loaded it full of shot and put it against my breast! A twitch and I'll pull!----Oh, he would have fired, Moritz, he would have fired!----Then he put the thing in his mouth like a blow-pipe.----That awoke the feeling of self-preservation. And then----brrr!----the shot might have gone through my spine. MORITZ. Is Heinrich living yet? ILSE. How do I know!----Over the bed was a large mirror set into the ceiling. The room seemed as high as a tower and as bright as an opera house. One saw one's self hanging down bodily from heaven. I had frightful dreams at night----O God, O God, if it were only day!----Good-night, Ilse, when you are asleep you will be pretty to murder! MORITZ. Is this Heinrich living yet? ILSE. Please God, no!----One day, when he went for absinthe, I put on the mantle and ran out into the street. The carnival was over; the police arrested me; what was I doing in man's clothes?----They took me to the Central Station. Nohl, Fehrendorf, Padinsky, Spühler, Oikonomopulos, the whole Priapia came there and bailed me out. They transported me in a cab to Adolar's studio. Since then I've been true to the herd. Fehrendorf is an ape, Nohl is a pig, Bojokewitsch an owl, Loison a hyena, Oikonomopulos a camel----therefore I love one and all of them the same and wouldn't attach myself to anyone else, even if the world were full of archangels and millionaires! MORITZ. I must go back, Ilse. ILSE. Come as far as our house with me! MORITZ. What for?----What for?---- ILSE. To drink warm goat's milk! I will singe your hair and hang a little bell around your neck.----Then we have another kid with which you can play. MORITZ. I must go back. I have yet the Sassanides, the Sermon on the Mount and the parallelepipedon on my thoughts.----Good-night, Ilse! ILSE. Sleep well!----Do you ever go to the wigwam where Melchi Gabor buried my tomahawk?----Brrr! until you are married I'll lie in the straw. (_Runs out._) MORITZ. (_Alone._)