SCHÖN--[_Sardonically._] For you with your origin it’s incomparable luck to still have the chance of appearing before respectable people! LULU--Even when my shamelessness makes them not know where to look. SCHÖN--Nonsense!--Shamelessness?--Don’t make a necessity of virtue! Your shamelessness is what balances your every step with gold. One cries “bravo,” another “fie”--it’s all the same to you! Can you wish for a more brilliant triumph than when a respectable girl can hardly be kept in the box? Has your life any other aim? As long as you still have a spark of self-respect, you are no perfect dancer. The more terribly you make people shudder, the higher you stand in your profession! LULU--And it is absolutely indifferent to me what they think of me. I don’t, in the least, want to be any better than I am. I’m content with myself. SCHÖN--[_In moral indignation._] That is your true nature. That’s straight!--Corruption! LULU--I wouldn’t have known that I had had a spark of self-respect---- SCHÖN--[_Suddenly distrustful._] No harlequinading---- LULU--O Lord--I know very well what I’d have become if you hadn’t saved me from it. SCHÖN--Are you anything different then to-day?--heh? LULU--God be thanked, no! SCHÖN--Just so! LULU--[_Laughs._] And how awfully glad of it I am! SCHÖN--[_Spits._] Will you dance now? LULU--In anything, before anyone! SCHÖN--Then down to the stage! LULU--[_Begging like a child._] Just a minute more! Please! I can’t stand up straight yet. They’ll ring. SCHÖN--You have become what you are in spite of everything I sacrificed for your education and your welfare. LULU--Had you overrated your ennobling influence? SCHÖN--Spare me your witticisms. LULU--The Prince was here. SCHÖN--Well? LULU--He takes me with him to Africa. SCHÖN--Africa? LULU--Why not? Didn’t you make me a dancer just so that someone might come and take me away with him? SCHÖN--But not to Africa, though! LULU--Then why didn’t you calmly let me fall in a faint, and mutely thank the Lord for it? SCHÖN--Because, more’s the pity, I had no reason for believing in your faint! LULU--[_Making fun of him._] You couldn’t bear it any longer out front there? SCHÖN--Because I had to bring home to you what you are and to whom you are not to look up. LULU--You were afraid, though, that my legs might possibly have been really injured? SCHÖN--I know too well you are indestructible. LULU--So you know that? SCHÖN--[_Bursting out._] Don’t look at me so impudently! LULU--No one is keeping you here. SCHÖN--I’m going as soon as the bell rings. LULU--As soon as you have the energy! Where is your energy? You have been engaged three years. Why don’t you marry? You recognize no obstacles. Why do you try to put the blame on me? You ordered me to marry Dr. Goll: I forced Dr. Goll to marry me. You ordered me to marry the painter: I made the best of a bad bargain. Artists are your creatures, princes your protégés. Why don’t you marry?