He stood still for a moment. His temples throbbed. He felt absolutely helpless and was as near crying as swearing.
Then he heard a voice—the voice of his beloved.
“Freder—!” and once more: “Freder—!”
He saw blood before his eyes. He made to throw himself with the full weight of his shoulders against the door …
But in that same moment the door opened noiselessly. It swung back in ghostly silence, leaving the way into the house absolutely free.
That was so unexpected and alarming that, in the midst of the swing which was to have thrown him against the door, Freder caught both his hands against the doorposts, and stood fixed there. He buried his teeth in his lips. The heart of the house was as black as midnight …
But the voice of Maria called to him from the heart of the house: “Freder—! Freder—!”
He ran into the house as though he had gone blind. The door fell to behind him. He stood in blackness. He called. He received no answer. He saw nothing. He groped. He felt walls—endless walls … Steps … He climbed up the steps …
A pale redness swam about him like the reflection of a distant gloomy fire.
Suddenly—he stopped still, clawing his hand into the stonework behind him—a sound was coming out of the nothingness: The weeping of a woman sorrowing, sorrowing unto death.
It was not very loud, but yet it was as if the source of all lamentation were streaming out of it. It was as though the house were weeping—as though every stone in the wall were a sobbing mouth, set free from eternal dumbness, once and once only, to mourn an everlasting agony.
Freder shouted—he was fully aware that he was only shouting in order not to hear the weeping any more.
“Maria—Maria—Maria—!”
His voice was clear and wild as an oath: “I am coming!”
He ran up the stairs. He reached the top of the stairs. A passage, scarcely lighted. Twelve doors opened out here.
In the wood of each of these doors glowed, copper-red, the seal of Solomon, the pentagram.
He sprang to the first one. Before he had touched it it swung noiselessly open before him. Emptiness lay behind it. The room was quite bare.
The second door. The same.
The third. The fourth. They swung open before him as though his breath had blown them off the latch.
Freder stood still. He screwed his head down between his shoulders. He raised his arm and wiped it across his forehead. He looked around him. The open doors stood agape. The mournful weeping ceased. All was quite silent.
But out of the silence there came a voice, soft and sweet, and more tender than a kiss …
“Come … ! Do come … ! I am here, dearest … !”
Freder did not stir. He knew the voice quite well. It was Maria’s voice, which he so loved. And yet it was a strange voice. Nothing in the world could be sweeter than the tone of this soft allurement—and nothing in the world has ever been so filled to overflowing with a dark, deadly wickedness.
Freder felt the drops upon his forehead.
“Who are you?” he asked expressionlessly.
“Don’t you know me?”
“Who are you?”
“… Maria …”
“You are not Maria …”
“Freder—!” mourned the voice—Maria’s voice.
“Do you want me to lose my reason?” said Freder, between his teeth. “Why don’t you come to me?”
“I can’t come, beloved …”
“Where are you?”
“Look for me!” said the sweetly alluring, the deadly wicked voice, laughing softly.
But through the laughter there sounded another voice—being 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 off, her voice choked. But the other voice—which was also Maria’s voice, laughed, sweetly, alluringly, on:
“Look for me, beloved!”
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 flame 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 Maria …
“Look for me, beloved! … I am here! … I am here! …”
At last he fell. His knees collided against something which was in the way of their blindness; he stumbled and fell. 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 rolled over on his back. He pushed himself up, collapsed again violently, and lay upon the floor. A suffocating blanket sank downwards. His consciousness yielded up, as though drowned …
Rotwang had seen him fall. He waited attentively and vigilantly to see if this young wildling, the son of Joh Fredersen and Hel, had had enough at last, or if he would pull himself together once more for the fight against nothing.
But it appeared that he had had enough. He lay remarkably still. He was not even breathing now. He was like a corpse.
The great inventor left his listening post. He passed through the dark house on soundless soles. He opened a door and entered a room. He closed the door and remained standing on the threshold. With an expectation that was fully aware of its pointlessness, he looked at the girl who was the occupant of the room.
He found her as he always found her. In the farthest corner of the room, on a high, narrow chair, hands laid, right and left, upon the arms of the chair, sitting stiffly upright, with eyes which appeared to be lidless. Nothing about her was living apart from these eyes. The glorious mouth, still glorious in its
