METROPOLIS 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-I" His voice was clear and wild as an oath: "I am comingl" He ran up the stan·s. 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 fh'st 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 stilI. 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: .. I Do come I I am here, dearest ... I" 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 allw'ement-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 mer' "Who are you?" ".... Maria...." J
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