Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/210

 METROPOLIS the cry of the multitude as it stared back. He saw but one thing: the white-gleaming Bgure of the man, who, upright and uninjured, was walking along the roof of the cathech'al with the even step of one fearing nothing, carrying the girl in his arms.

Then Joh Fredersen bent down, so low that his forehead touched the stones of the cathedral square. And those near enough to him heard the weeping which welled up from his heart, as water from a rock.

As his hands loosened from his head, all who stood around him saw that Joh Fredersen's hair had turned snow-white.

CHAPTER XXIII "BELOVED-I" said Freder, Joh Fredersen's son. lt was the softest, the· most cautious call of which a human voice is capable. But Maria answered it just as little as she had answered the shouts of despair with which the man who loved her had wished to Ie-awaken her to coa~ sciousness of herself.

She lay couched upon the steps of the high altar, stretched out in her slenderness. her head in Freder's arm, her hands

in Freder's hand, and the gentle Bre of the lofty churchwindows burnt upon her quite white face and upon her quite white hands. Her heart heat, slowly, barely, perceptibly. She did not breathe. She lay sunken in the depths of an exhaustion from which no shout, no entreaty, no cry of despair could have dragged her. She was as though dead. A hand was laid upon Freder's shoulder. . He turned his head. He looked into the face of his father. Was that his father? Was that Joh Fredersen, the master over the great Metropolis? Had his father such white hair? And so tormented a brow? And such tortured eyes? Was there, in this world, after this night of madness, nothing but horror and death and destruction and agoaywithout end-?

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