Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/5

 METROPOLIS the beautifully vaulted room, in which his organ stood. From

the sea-deep blue of the heavens, from the flawless gold of the heavenly bodies, from the mysterious twilight around him,

the girl looked at him with the deadly severity of purity,

quite maid and mistress. inviolability, graciousness i~selfJ ~er beautiful brow in the diadem of goodness. her vOIce, pIty, every word a song. Then to turn. and to go, and to vanishno more to be found. Nowhere, nowhere. 'You-I cried the man. The captive note struck against the walls, finding no way out. Now the loneliness was no longer hearable. Freder stood up and opened the windows. The works lay, in quivering brightness, before him. He pressed his eyes closed, standing still, hardly breathing. He felt the proximity of the servants, standing silently, waiting for the command which would permit Uleffi to come to life.

There was one among them-Slim. with his courteous face, the expression of which never changed-Freder knew of him: one word to him, and, if the girl'still walked on earth with her silent step, then Slim would find her. But one does not set a blood-hound on the track of a sacred, white hind, if one does not want to be cursed, and to be, all his life long, a miserable, miserable man. . Freder saw, without looking at Wm, how Slim's eyes were taking stock of him. He knew that the silent creature, ordained, by his father, to be his all~powerfui protector, was, at the same time, his keeper. During the fever of nights, bereft of sleep, during the fever of his work, in his work~shop, during the fever when playing his organ, caBing upon God, there would be Slim measuring the pulse of the son of his great master. He gave no reports; they were not required of him. But, if the hour should come in which they were demanded of him, he would certainly have a diary of faultless perfection to produce, from the number of steps with which one in torment treads out his loneliness with heavy foot, from minute to minute. to the dropping of a brow into propped up hands, tired with longing. Could it be possible that this man, who knew everything, knew nothing of h e r ? '.

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