Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/84

 METROPOLiS is only 0 Not-yet. I hove made up my mind to venture the path. I must take it-yes, I must take it! I do not know the way yet, hut I shall find it because I must find it...." "Wherever you wish, Mr. Freder-l shall go with you....-

"Thank yoU;' said Freder, reaching out his hand. He felt it seized and clasped in a vice~1ik:e grip. ·You know, Mr. Freder, don't you-" said the strangled voice of Josaphot, "thot everything belongs to you-everything that I am and have. ... It is not much, for I have lived like a madman But for to·day, and tOMIDorrow and the day after to-morrow ," Freder shook his head without losing hold of Josophat's hand. "No, nol" he said, a torrent of red Bowing over his face. "One does not begin new ways like that. . . . We must try to find other ways. . . . It will not be easy. Slim knows his business:' "Perhaps Slim could be won over to you...." said Josaphat, hesitatingly. "For-strange though it may sound, he loves you...." "Slim loves all his victims. Which does not prevent him, as the most considerate and kindly of executioners, from laying them before my fother's feet. He is the born tool, but the tool of the strongest. He would never make himself the tool of the weaker one. for he would thus humiliate himself. And you have just told me. Josaphat. how much stronger my father is than I. ..." if you were to conJlde yourself to one of your mends....w "I have no friends, Josaphat." Josaphot wanted to contradict, but he stopped himself. Freder turned his eyes towards him. He straightened himself up and smiled-the other's hand still in his. "I have no friends, Josaphat, and, what weighs still more, I have no friend. I had play-fellows-sport-fellowsbut friends? A friend? No, Josaphotl Can one confide oneself to somebody of whom one knows nothing but how his laugh· ter sounds?" He saw the eyes of the other fixed upon him, discerned the ardour in them and the pain and the truth.

89