In the tête-à-tête showcase are the two most costly and most personal treasures of the Mata Hari Collection:  the leather-bound scrapbooks in which Mata Hari kept track of her public life and wrote her personal comments. The books are opened to two important moments in her life: her starring role as Venus at the Scala in Milan (1911-1912) and the time when World War I broke out. At that time she was in Berlin for her first series of performances in that city. She writes in pencil, 'La Guerre, théatre fermée, partie de Berlin' (War, theatre closed, left Berlin). Unaware of it at that time, she had put her career as a dancer behind her and was starting her life as a spy. A choreography is woven into the genuine Persian carpet around the showcase as if she had just stepped off the podium, her footprints still visible. The carpet dissolves into the tinted photograph.