METROPOLIS "The witch-I Kill the witch-I Burn her before we all drownl" And the trampling of running feet filled the dead street, through which the girl fled, with the din of hen broken loose. The houses flashed by in a whirl. She did not know the way in the dark. She sped on, running aimlessly, in a blind horror. which was the deeper for her not knowing its origin. Stones, cudgels, fragments of steel, flew at her from bebind. The mob roared in a voice which was no longer human:
"After her-I After her-I She'll escape us-I Quicker-II Quicker-II" Maria could no longer feel her feet. She did not know if she was running on stones or water. Her panting breath came through lips which stood apart as those of one drowning. Up streets, down streets. " .. A twirling dance of lights was staggering across the way, far ahead of her. . . . Far away, at the end Df the enormous square, in which Rotwang's
house also lay, the mass of the cathedral rested upon the earth, weighty and dark, yet showing a tender I reassuring 'shimmer, which fen through cheerful stained-glass windows and through open porlal, out into the darkness.
Suddenly breaking out into sobs, Maria tlu:ew herself forward with' ·her last, entirely despairing strength. She stumbled up the cathedral steps, stumbled through the portal, perceived the .odo:ur of incense, saw little, pious candles of intercession before the image of a gentle saint who was suffering smilingly, and collapsed on to the flags. She no longer saw how, at the double opening of the street which Jed to the cathedral, the stream of dancers from Yoshiwara coincided .with the roaring stream of workmen end women, did not hear the bestial shriek of the women at the sight of the girl who was riding along on the shoulders of a dancer-who was tom down, overtaken, captured and stamped to earth-did not see the short, ghastly hopeless conflict of the men in evening dress with the men in blue linen-nor the ridiculous' fight of the half naked' women before the claws and fists of the workmen's wives. She lay in deep oblivion, in the great, mild solemnity of death, and from the depths of her unconsciousness she 195
