ILSE--Last night we were at Nohl’s; night before at Boyokevitch’s; Sunday with Oikonomopulos. At Padinsky’s there was champagne. Valabregez had sold his “Man Sick with the Plague.” Adolar drank out of the ash-tray. Lenz sang “The Murd’ress of Her Child,” and Adolar played the guitar to pieces. I was so drunk they had to put me to bed.--You’re still going to school all the time, Moritz? MORITZ--No, no--this term, I’m getting out. ILSE--You’re right. Oh, how the time flies when you’re earning money!--D’you remember how we used to play robbers?--Wendla Bergmann and you and I and the rest, when you all came out in the evening and drank new, warm goat’s milk at our house?--What’s Wendla doing? I remember seeing her at the flood.--What’s Melchi Gabor doing?--Does he still gaze so deeply into things?--In singing-lesson we used to stand opposite each other. MORITZ--He philosophizes. ILSE--Wendla came to see us a while ago, and brought mother some preserves. I was sitting that day for Isidor Landauer. He’s using me for Holy Mary, the Mother of God, with the Christ-child. He’s a ninny, and disgusting. Whew! like a weathercock!--Have you got a “morning after” headache? MORITZ--From last night. We swilled like hippopotamuses. It was five o’clock when I staggered home. ILSE--One only needs to look at you.--Were there girls there? MORITZ--Arabella, the bar-maid,--a Spanish girl. The landlord left us all, the whole night through, alone with her. ILSE--One only needs to look at you, Moritz.--I never have these morning-afters! Last Carnival I went for three days and three nights without getting into a bed, or even out of my clothes. From masquerade ball to café; noontimes at the Bellavista, evenings at the cabaret, nights to another ball! Lena was along, and fatty Viola.--The third night, Henry found me. MORITZ--Had he been looking for you? ILSE--He’d stumbled over my arm. I was lying senseless in the gutter-snow.--So then I joined up with him. For two weeks I never left his lodgings. That was a horrible time!--Mornings I had to throw on his Persian dressing-gown, and evenings walk about the room in a black page’s costume--white lace at the collar, cuffs, and knees. Every day he’d photograph me in a new arrangement: one time on the back of the sofa, as Ariadne, another time as Leda, another as Ganymede, and once on all fours as a female Nebuchadnezzar. And then he would rave about killing--about shooting, suicide, and charcoal fumes. Early mornings he’d bring a pistol into bed, load it full of cartridges and poke it into my breast: one wink, and I’ll fire!--Oh, he would have fired, Moritz; he would have fired!--Then he’d stick the thing in his mouth like a bean-shooter. Maybe that would wake my instinct for self-preservation! And then--Brrr! the bullet would have gone through my spine. MORITZ--Is Henry still alive?