“Look for me, beloved!... I am here!... I am here!...”
At last he fell. His knees collided against something which was in the way of their blindness; he stumbled and fell. He felt stones under his hands, cool, hard stones, cut in even squares. His whole body, beaten and racked, rested upon the cool hardness of these blocks. He rolled over on his back. He pushed himself up, collapsed again violently, and lay upon the floor. A suffocating blanket sank downwards. His consciousness yielded up, as though drowned....
Rotwang had seen him fall. He waited attentively and vigilantly to see if this young wildling, the son of Joh Fredersen and Hel, had had enough at last, or if he would pull himself together once more for the fight against nothing.
But it appeared that he had had enough. He lay remarkably still. He was not even breathing now. He was like a corpse.
The great inventor left his listening post. He passed through the dark house on soundless soles. He opened a door and entered a room. He closed the door and remained standing on the threshold. With an expectation that was fully aware of its pointlessness, he looked at the girl who was the occupant of the room.
He found her as he always found her. In the farthest corner of the room, on a high, narrow chair, hands laid, right and left, upon the arms of the chair, sitting stiffly upright, with eyes which appeared to be lidless. Nothing about her was living apart from these eyes. The glorious mouth, still glorious in its pallor, seemed to enclose within it the unpronounceable. She did not look at the man—she looked over and beyond him.
Rotwang stooped forward. He came nearer to her. Only his hands, his lonely hands groped through the air, as though they wanted to close around Maria’s countenance. His eyes, his lonely eyes, enveloped Maria’s countenance.
“Won’t you smile just once?” he asked. “Won’t you cry just once? I need them both—your smile and your tears.... Your image, Maria, just as you are now, is burnt into my retina, never to be lost.... I could take a diploma in your horror and in your rigidity. The bitter expression of contempt about your mouth is every bit as familiar to me as the haughtiness of your eyebrows and your temples. But I need your smile and your tears, Maria. Or you will make me bungle my work....”
He seemed to have spoken to the deaf air. The girl sat dumb, looking over and beyond him.
Rotwang took a chair; he sat down astride it, crossed his arms over the back and looked at the girl. He laughed gloomily.