METROPOLIS "Won't you understand meP" asked Freder. "Why do you look at me with such stern eyes? You wish me to he a medi~ ator between Joh Fredersen and those whom you call your brothers. .. . There can he no mediator between heaven and hell who never was in heaven and hell. ... I never knew hell until yesterday. That is why I failed so deplorably, yesterday, when I spoke to my father for your brothers. Until you stood before me for the first time, Maria, I lived the life of a dearly loved son. I did not know what an unrealisable wish was. I kne"Y no longing, for everything was mine. . . . Young as I am, I have exhausted the pleasures of the earth. down to the very bottom. I had an aim-a gamble with Death: A Bight to the stars.... And then you came and showed me my brothers . . . . From that day on I have sought you. I have so longed for you that I should gladly and unhesitatingly have died, had somebody told me that that was the way to you. But a~ it was. I had to live and seek another way . .." "To me, or to your brothers-... p" "To you, Maria ... I will not make myself out to you to be better than I am. I want to come to you, Maria-and I want you ... I love mankind, not for its own sake, but for your sake-because you love it. I do not want to help mankind for its own sake, but for your sake-because you wish it. Yesterday I did good to two men; I helped one whom my father had dismissed. And I did the work of the man, whose uniform I have on.... That was my way to you.... God bless you ..." His voice failed him. The girl stepped up to him. She took his hands in both her hands. She gently hlrned the palms upward, and considered them, looked at them with her Madonna-eyes, and folded her hands tendedy around his, which she carefully laid together. «Maria," he said, without a sound. She let his hands fall and raised her's to his head. She laid her finger-tips on his cheeks. With her fingertips she stroked his eyebrows, his temples, twice, three times. Then he snatched her to his heart and they kissed each other ...
69 ~
