METROPOLIS "He is in great need of it~ Joh...." Silence. Then Joh Fredersen raised his head. His eyes looked as though sprinkled with purple. "I have lost, HeI, mother," he said. "I can't los~ Freder too...." "Have you reason to fear that you will lose him?" "Yes." "Then I am surprised," .~aid the old lady, "that Freder has not yet come to me . "He is very ill, mother " The old lady made a movement as though wishing to rise, and into her archangel eyes there came an angry glitter. "When he came here recently," she said, "he was as healthy as a tree in bloom. Wlaat ails him?" Joh Fredersen got up and began to walk up and down the room. He smelt the perfume of Rowers streaming up from the garden through the open window as something inflicting pain which ripped his forehead into lines. «I do not know," he said suddenly, quite disjointedly. "how this girl could have stepped into his life. I do not know how she won this monstrous hold over him. But I heard from his own !ips h~~ he said to her: My father no longer has a son, Mana.... "Freder does not lie. Joh. So you have lost him already." Joh Fredersen did not answer. He thought of Rotwang. He had said the same words to him. "Is it about this that you have come to me, Joh?" asked his mother. "Then you could have spared yourself the trouble. Freder 15 Hel's son. Yes.... That means he has a soft heart. But he is your's too, Joh. That means he has a skull of steel. You know best, Joh, how much obstinacy a man can summon up to attain to the woman he wants." "You cannot make that comparison, mother. Freder is almost a boy, stilI. When I took Hel to me I was a man, and knew what I was doing. Hel was more needful to me than the air to breathe. I could not do without Hel, Mother. I would have stolen her from the anTIS of God himself." «From Cod, Joh, you can steal nothing; but something can be stolen from man. You have done that. You have sinned. 140
