SCHIGOLCH. Your ladyship would now like to stretch her feet out under our table?
LULU. (_Tonelessly._) I'm going down again.
GESCHWITZ. Where are you going in this pomp?--However, I come not wholly empty-handed. I bring you something else. On my way here an old-clothes man offered me twelve shillings for it, but I could not force myself to part from it. You can sell it, though, if you want to.
ALVA. Let us see it. (_Takes the canvas and unrolls it. Visibly rejoiced._) Oh, by God, it's Lulu's portrait!
LULU. (_Screaming._) Monster, you brought that here? Get it out of my sight! Throw it out of the window!
ALVA. (_Suddenly with renewed life, deeply pleased._) Why, I should like to know? Looking on this picture I regain my self-respect. It makes my fate comprehensible to me. Everything we have endured gets clear as day. (_In a somewhat elegiac strain._) Let him who feels secure in his middle-class position when he sees these blossoming pouting lips, these child-eyes, big and innocent, this rose-white body abounding in life,--let him cast the first stone at us!
SCHIGOLCH. We must nail it up. It will make an excellent impression on our patrons.
ALVA. (_Energetic._) There's a nail sticking all ready for it in the wall.
SCHIGOLCH. But how did you come upon this acquisition?
GESCHWITZ. I secretly cut it out of the wall in your house, there, after you were gone.
ALVA. Too bad the color's got rubbed off round the edges. You didn't roll it up carefully enough. (_Fastens it to a high nail in the wall._)
SCHIGOLCH. It's got to have another one underneath if it's going to hold. It makes the whole flat look more elegant.
ALVA. Let me alone; I know how I'll do it. (_He tears several nails out of the wall, pulls off his left boot, and with its heel nails the edges of the picture to the wall._)
SCHIGOLCH. It's just got to hang a while again, to get its proper effect. Whoever looks at that'll imagine afterwards he's been in an Indian harem.
ALVA. (_Putting on his boot again, standing up proudly._) Her body was at its highest point of development when that picture was painted. The lamp, kid dear! Seems to me it's got extraordinarily dark.
GESCHWITZ. He must have been an eminently gifted artist who painted that!