METROPOLIS "You are not Maria ...» <'Freder-I" momned the voice-Maria's voice. "Do you want me to lose my reason?" said Freder. between
his teeth. "Why don't you come to mer' "1 can't come, beloved...." «Where are you?"
"Look for mel" said the sweetly alluring, the deadly wicked voice, laughing softly. But through the laughter there sounded another voicebeing also Maria's voice, sick with fear and horror. "Freder.. .. help me, Freder. ... I do not know what is
being done to me. ... But what is being done is worse than murder. ... My eyes are on. ..." Suddenly, as though cut of!, her voice choked. But the other voice-which was also Maria's voice. laughed, sweetly, alluringly, on: "Look for me, belovedl" Freder began to run. Senselessly and unreasoningly. he began to run. Along walls, by open doors, upstairs, downstairs, from twilight into darkness, drawn on by the cones of
light, which would suddenly Hame up before him, then dazzled and plunged again into a hellish darkness. He ran like a blind animal, groaning aloud. He found that he was running in a circle, always upon his own tracks, but he could not get free of it, could not get out of the cursed circle. He ran in the purple mist of his own blood, which
filled his eyes and ears, heard the breaker of his blood dash against his brain, heard high above, like the singing of birds,
the sweetly, deadly wicked laugh of Mana.... "Look for me, beloved!. • . . I am hereI. • • • I am here!. .. :' At last he fell. His knees collided against something which was in the way of their blindness; he stumbled and fen. 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 roHed over on his back. He pushed himself up, collapsed again violently, and lay upon the Hoar. A suffocating blanket sank downwards. His consciousness yielded up, as though drowned . ...
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