METROPOLIS self in the surf of people as though into her very familiar element. Freder leaped for the door. He heaved with his whole body, with his shoulders, his knees, against the door. He no longer shouted. His mouth was gaping open. His breath burnt his lips grey. He sprang back to the window. There, outside. hardly ten paces from the window. stood a policeman, his face turned towards Rotwang's house. The man's face registered absolute nonchalance. Nothing seemed· to be farther from his mind than to watch -the magician's house. But the man who was striving, with bleeding fists, to shatter a window pane in his house could not have escaped even his most casual glance. Freder paused. He stared at the policeman's face with an unreasoning hatred, born of fear of losing time where there Vas no time to be lost. He turned around and snatched up the rude foot.stool. which stood near the table. He dashed the foot-stool with full force at the window pane. The rebound jerked him backwards. The pane was undamaged. Sobbing fury welled up in Freder's throat. He swung the foot-stool and-hurled it at the door. The foot-stool crashed to earth. FredeI' dashed to it. snatched it up and struck and struck, again and again. at the booming door. in a ruddy, blind desire to destroy. Wood splintered. white. The door shrieked like a living thing. Freder did not pause. To the rhythm of his own boiling blood. he ~at against the door until it broke. quivering. Freder dragged himself through the hole. He ran through the house. His wild eyes sought an enemy and fresh obstacles in each corner. But he found neither one nor the other. Unchallenged. he reached the door, found it open and reeled out into the street. He ran in the direction which Maria had taken. But the surf of the people had w;lshed her away. She had vanished. For some minutes Freder stood among the hurrying mob. as though paralysed. One senseless hope befogged his brain: Perhaps-perhaps she would come back again ... if he were patient and waited long enough ... But he remembered the cathedral-waiting in vain-her
106
