LULU--[_Goaded._] I cannot sell the only thing that ever was my own! CASTI-PIANI--Let me read some more. LULU--[_As before._] This very evening, I’ll hand over to you our entire wealth. CASTI-PIANI--Believe me, for God’s sake, I’ve =got= your last red cent! If we haven’t left this house before eleven, you and your lot will be transported to-morrow in a police-car to Germany. LULU--You =can’t= give me up! CASTI-PIANI--Do you think that would be the worst thing I “can” have done in my life?... I must, in case we go to-night, have just a brief word with Bianetta. [_He goes into the card-room, leaving the door open behind him._ LULU _stares before her, mechanically crumpling up the note that_ RODRIGO _stuck into her hand, which she has held in her fingers thruout the dialogue_. ALVA, _behind the card-table, gets up, a bill in his hand, and comes into the salon_.] ALVA--[_To_ LULU.] Brilliantly! It’s going brilliantly! Geschwitz is wagering her last shirt. Puntschu has promised me ten more Jungfrau-shares. Steinherz is making her little gains and profits. [_Exit, lower right._] LULU--I in a bordel? [_She reads the paper she holds, and laughs madly._] ALVA--[_Coming back with a cash-box in his hand._] Aren’t you going to play, too? LULU--Oh, yes, surely--why not? ALVA--By the way, it’s in the “Berliner Tageblatt” to-day that Alfred Hugenberg has hurled himself over the stairs in prison. LULU--Is he too in prison? ALVA--Only in a sort of house of detention. [_Exit, rear._ LULU _is about to follow, but_ COUNTESS GESCHWITZ _meets her in the doorway_.] GESCHWITZ--You are going because I come? LULU--[_Resolutely._] No, God knows. But when you come then I go. GESCHWITZ--You have defrauded me of all the good things of this world that I still possessed. You might at the very least preserve the outward forms of politeness in your intercourse with me. LULU--[_As before._] I am as polite to you as to any other woman. I only beg you to be equally so to me. GESCHWITZ--Have you forgotten the passionate endearments you used, while we lay together in the hospital, to seduce me into letting myself be locked into prison for you? LULU--Well, why else did you bring me down with the cholera beforehand? I swore very different things to myself, even while it was going on, from what I had to promise you! I am shaken with horror at the thought that that should ever become reality! GESCHWITZ--Then you cheated me consciously, deliberately! LULU--[_Gaily._] And what have you been cheated of, eh? Your physical advantages have found so enthusiastic an admirer here, that I ask myself if I won’t have to give piano lessons once more, to keep alive! No seventeen-year-old child could make a man madder with love than you, a pervert, are making him, poor fellow, by your shrewishness. GESCHWITZ--Of whom are you speaking? I don’t understand a word.