ESCERNY. (Rises and kisses her hand.) Allow me to remain here a little while longer.
LULU. Please, stay.
ESCERNY. I need some solitude. (Lulu goes out.) What is to be aristocratic? To be eccentric, like me? Or to be perfect in body and mind, like this girl? (Applause and bravos outside.) He who gives me back my faith in men, gives me back my life. Should not the children of this woman be more princely, body and soul, than the children whose mother has no more vitality in her than I have felt in me until to-day? (Sitting, right; ecstatically.) The dance has ennobled her body.... (Alva enters.)
ALVA. One is never sure a moment that some miserable chance may not throw the whole performance out for good. (He throws himself into the big chair, left, so that the two men are in exactly reversed positions from their former ones. Both converse somewhat boredly and apathetically.)
ESCERNY. But the public has never yet shown itself so grateful.
ALVA. She's finished the skirt-dance.
ESCERNY. I hear her coming....
ALVA. She isn't coming. She has no time. She changes her costume in the wings.
ESCERNY. She has two ballet-costumes, if I'm not mistaken?
ALVA. I find the white one more becoming to her than the rose.