SCHÖN. You destroying angel! You inexorable fate! To be a murderer without drowning in filth; to take me on board like a released convict, or hang me up over the morass! You joy of my old age! You hangman's noose!
LULU. (In cold blood.) Oh, shut up, and kill me!
SCHÖN. Everything I possess I have made over to you, and asked nothing but the respect that every servant pays to my house. Your credit is exhausted!
LULU. I can answer for my reckoning still for years. (Coming forward from the stairs.) How do you like my new gown?
SCHÖN. Away with you, or my brains will give way to-morrow and my son swim in his own blood! You infect me like an incurable pest in which I shall groan away the rest of my life. I will cure myself! Do you understand? (Pressing the revolver on her.) This is your physic. Don't break down; don't kneel! You yourself shall apply it. You or I—which is the weaker? (Lulu, her strength threatening to desert her, has sunk down on the couch. Turning the revolver this way and that.)
LULU. It doesn't go off.
SCHÖN. Do you still remember how I tore you out of the clutches of the police?
LULU. You have much confidence—
SCHÖN. Because I'm not afraid of a street-girl? Shall I guide your hand for you? Have you no mercy towards yourself? (Lulu points the revolver at him.) No false alarms! (Lulu fires a shot into the ceiling. Rodrigo springs out of the portières, up the stairs and away thru the gallery.) What was that?
LULU. (Innocently.) Nothing.