remembrance of which sent a tremor of delight through her.

Janina did not know whence these dreams came, but they would visit
her ever more frequently in spite of the poverty which again began
to grow more distressing, and the frequent hunger that gripped her
as it were in bony embrace. Her bracelet again went to the pawnshop,
for she continually had to buy some new article of wear for the
stage, so that often she was forced to deny herself food only to be
able to buy what she needed. New plays were continually presented to
draw the public but success was as far off as ever.

Such a situation harassed and tormented Janina dreadfully, robbing
her of her strength, but it also awakened a rebellion which began to
seethe silently within her. She felt at first an indefinable
animosity toward everybody. She regarded with a fierce envy the
women whom she met on the street.

Often, she would be seized with a mad desire to stop one of those
well-dressed ladies and ask her whether she knew what poverty was.
She observed intently their faces, their clothes, and their smiles
and came to the painful conclusion that these ladies could not know
that there were other people who suffered, wept, and were hungry.
But later Janina began to reason that she herself was dressed in the
same way as these other women; that there may be among them others
in the same plight as she, and that perhaps unknowingly they passed
her on the way, hungry and desperate, hurling the same glances at
other passers-by that she did. She tried to distinguish the faces of
such sufferers in the multitude, but could not. All appeared to be
satisfied and happy.

Then, something like the triumph of her own ascendancy over this
well-dressed and well-fed multitude lit up Janina's face. She felt
herself to be far superior to this world of everyday mortals.

"I have an idea, an aim!" she thought. "What do they live for? What
is their object in life?" she would often ask herself. And unable to
answer that question, Janina would smile pityingly at the emptiness
of their existence.

"A race of butterflies that knows not whence, nor why, nor to what
end their life has been given them!" she whispered, sating herself
to her heart's content with that silent scorn of people that was
growing to abnormal proportions in her.

Cabinska, Janina now hated with her whole soul, for although Pepa
always treated her with a sugary affability, she never paid her for
Yadzia's piano lessons, taking advantage of Janina's situation and
abilities with a hypocritical smile of friendliness. Janina could
not sever relations with her, for she felt distinctly that behind
that mask of politeness that Pepa wore there was hidden a fury who
would not forgive her that. Furthermore, she hated Cabinska as a
woman, a mother, and an actress. She had come to know her well, and
moreover, in her present period of continual strain and struggle,
she had either to love or hate someone immensely. Janina did not
love anyone as yet, but already she hated.

"Do you know it is hardly believable that such an incompetent judge
as the directress should herself assign the roles for all our
plays!" she once remarked to Wladek greatly embittered by the fact
that she had been ignored in the selection of the cast for an old
melodramatic caricature entitled Martin, the Foundling.

"It is too bad that you did not ask her for a role for, as you see,
the director can do nothing," said Wladek.

"Quite true! That's a good idea! I'll try it to-morrow."

"Ask her for the role of 'Mary' in Doctor Robin which we are to
present next week. Some amateur wishes to join our company and he is
to make his debut as 'Garrick.'"

"What sort of role is that of 'Mary?'"

"A splendid display role! I think that you would act it superbly. I
can bring you the play, if you wish."

"Good! we can read it together."

On the morrow Janina received a solemn promise from Cabinska that
she would be given the part.

In the afternoon Wladek brought Doctor Robin. This was his first
visit to Janina's home, so he took care to appear particularly
handsome, elegant, polite, and somewhat absent-minded. He acted love
and respect for Janina with the skill of a virtuoso; he was very
quiet, as though from an excess of happiness.

"For the first time I feel shy and happy!" he said, kissing Janina's
hand.

"Why shy? You are always so sure of yourself on the stage!" she
answered, a bit confused.

"Yes, on the stage, where one only plays happiness, but not
here . . . where I am really happy."

"Happy?" she repeated.

Wladek glanced at Janina with such passionate intensity, with such
mastery of facial expression, accentuated by a rapturous smile,
simulating the ecstasy and transport of love, that had he shown this
on the stage he would have been warmly applauded. Janina understood
him excellently and something stirred in her as though some new
string in her heart had been lightly plucked.

Wladek began to read the play. With each of "Mary's" words, Janina's
enthusiastic nature burst forth anew. With bated breath, and eyes
fixed on Wladek, she listened, not daring to mar, either by word or
gesture, the impression that his reading made on her. She feared to
dispel the charm that spoke through his eloquent voice and in the
velvety softness of his black eyes.

When he had finished reading, the girl cried out in rapture: "What a
splendid role!"

"I am willing to wager that you will make a furore in it," remarked
Wladek.

"Yes . . . I feel that I could play it fairly well. 'Garrick, that
creator of souls, so mighty in Coriolanus!'" she whispered,
repeating a remembered line of the play.

And Janina's face glowed with such fervor, so radiant did she become
with her deep inner joy, that Wladek scarcely recognized her.

"You are an enthusiast," he said.

"Yes, because I love art! Give all for art and everything is
contained in art! . . . that is my motto. Beyond art I see almost
nothing," answered Janina suddenly kindling anew with ardor.

"Even love?" asked Wladek.

"But art appears to me to be a greater and completer expression of
the ideal than love . . ." answered Janina.

"But it is more alien to human beings and not so necessary to life
as is love. Without art the world could exist, but without
love . . . never! Moreover, art causes more painful disappointments
than love."

"But it also gives greater joys. Love is an individual emotion; art
is a social emotion, a synthesis. One loves it with one's humanity,
one suffers for it, but only through art does one sometimes become
immortal!"

"Those are dreams. Thousands have given their lives to become
convinced of that and thousands have cursed that unattainable
mirage."

"But those thousands had their lives filled with that mirage and
felt more than one can feel, who dreams about nothing."

"But since they were not happy, what is it all worth?"

"And are most people happy?"

"A thousandfold more so than we!"

Wladek emphasized that "we" significantly.

"Never!" cried Janina, "for our happiness lies in pain as it does in
joy, in dejection as well as ecstasy. Even this in itself is
happiness: to be able to develop one's self spiritually; to reach
far out into infinity with the arms of desire; to create new worlds
in our mind, larger and more beautiful than those surrounding us; to
chant, even through tears and pain, hymns to beauty and immortality;
to dream, but to dream so intensely as to forget about life entirely
and to live in dreams alone!"

Janina felt so great a flood of happiness and inspiration flowing
into her soul that she spoke, as it were, only in periods of her
thought, so that she might express herself at least in part. She
spoke, entirely forgetful of the fact that some one was listening to
her and spun out aloud ever grander and ever more evanescent dreams.

Wladek at first listened attentively, but later grew impatient.

"A comedienne!" he thought with irony. And he was sure that Janina
was unfurling before him the peacock feathers of fervor and
enthusiasm merely to fascinate and conquer him. He did not answer or
interrupt her, for it finally began to bore him.

"That role of 'Mary' is a trifle too sentimental . . ." added Janina
after a longer silence.

"To me it seemed merely lyrical," answered Wladek.

"I should like some time to play 'Ophelia.'"

"Are you familiar with Hamlet?" asked Wladek, somewhat surprised.

"During the last two years I have read nothing but dramas and
dreamed of the stage," she answered simply.

"Truly it is worth bending the knee before such enthusiasm!"

"Why? All that is necessary is to help it, to give it a field, an
opportunity. . . ."

"If I only could. . . . Believe me when I say, that with my whole
heart I desire to see you reach the heights of art."

"I believe you," Janina answered in a quieter tone. "And I thank you
very much for Doctor Robin."

"May I copy out the role for you?"

"I will copy it myself; it will give me a certain pleasure."

"While you are learning it, I could act as a prompter for you, if
you like."

"Oh, I should not want to take up any of your time . . ."

"Exclude a few hours each day for the performance and the rest of my
time is yours to dispose of as you will," he said with fervor.

They gazed at each other a moment.

Janina gave Wladek her hand; he held and kissed it for a long time.

"Beginning with to-morrow I shall start to learn the part for I have
a day off," said Janina.

"I also do not appear on the stage to-morrow."

Wladek went out a little angry at himself, for although he called
Janina a "comedienne" she had made him feel abashed with her
simplicity and enthusiasm. Moreover, he felt in her a certain
intellectual and artistic superiority.

Janina feverishly applied herself to the study of Doctor Robin. In a
few days she knew not only the role of "Mary," but had memorized the
entire play. So intensely eager was she to play the role, that it
seemed as though she were staking her whole life on this
performance. Her former dreams that had been subdued a bit by
poverty and the feverish life of the theater now again burst forth
with a flaming intensity that dazzled and hypnotized her. The
theater again took so powerful a hold on Janina that there was no
room in her consciousness for anything else. In her hours of ecstasy
it appeared to her like a mystic altar suspended high above the gray
vale of everyday life and glowing with flames like a second burning
bush of Moses; it seemed to her like a miracle that endured
eternally.

Wladek came to see Janina each day in the interval between the
rehearsal and the performance, although he was already beginning to
be immensely bored by her endlessly repeated raptures and was
growing impatient over the fact that in her mad absorption in art
she did not pay much attention to him. He could not penetrate her
morbid enthusiasm, as he called it, with his love, but he
nevertheless continued to go to her.

He began to desire Janina's love ever more strongly. He was invited
by her naivete and by the talent which he felt she possessed.
Moreover, he had long since desired just such an elegant and
educated mistress. He wanted by all means to possess this refined
and genteel girl, who was so different from his former mistresses
and who captivated him by the charm of her superiority. His triumph
would be all the greater, he told himself, because of the fact that
she seemed to him one of those ladies of the fashionable world upon
whom he would often cast covetous glances in the Ujazdowskie Allees.

Janina had not told Wladek that she loved him, but he already saw it
in her eyes and spun an ever stronger web about her made up of
smiles, passionate words, sighs, and exaggerated respect.

For Janina this was the most beautiful period that she had known in
her life. Poverty she treated with scorn, as though it were only a
temporary thing that would soon pass away.

Sowinska, after Wladek's frequent visits, became more intimate and
friendly with Janina and advised her to sell those parts of her
wardrobe which she did not need, even offering to do it for her.

And so life went on for Janina who was oblivious to everything else
but that performance of Doctor Robin which she awaited with the
greatest impatience. She lived, as it were, in a troubled dream.
Through the prism of dreams the world again appeared brighter to
her, and people kind. She forgot about everything, even about
Glogowski, whose recent letter she laid away only half read, for she
now lived entirely in the future. She fortified herself against the
present with dreams of what was to come.

Furthermore, Janina loved Wladek. She did not know how it had come
about, but she now knew that she could not do without him. She felt
very happy and peaceful, when, leaning on his arm, she walked along
the streets and listened to his low, melodious voice. The soft
velvety glances of his dark eyes made her glow with passion and a
sweet helplessness . . . .

Everything about him attracted her. He appeared so beautiful upon
the stage! He acted with such fervor and lyricism the parts of
unhappy lovers in the melodramas! He spoke, moved about and posed
with such charming simplicity. He was the favorite of the public;
even the press bestowed frequent praises upon him and predicted a
brilliant artistic future for him.

It pleased Janina to see him applauded on the stage. And so
skillfully did he know how to exhibit the resources of his brain,
that he was generally taken for an educated man, while in reality he
possessed only cleverness and the brazenness of a Warsaw loafer and
trickster. Moreover, for Janina he was the first and only man to
whom she had ever surrendered herself. It seemed to her that this
bound them for all time and indissolubly.

It happened, as it were, of itself, after one of the rehearsals of
Doctor Robin in which Wladek acted as a substitute in the role of
"Garrick." When they had left the theater he spoke or rather
declaimed to her about love with a volcanic outburst of passion and
accentuated his emotion with such pathos that he stirred her to the
very depths of her soul. She felt sudden tears of tenderness welling
up in her eyes; and a desire for tremendous happiness through life
and death remained in her dreaming heart. Her whole soul was
absorbed in the desire for love.

Janina did not even know what was happening to her, for she could
not resist the fascination of his voice. That musical pleading of
love, those burning kisses, and those passionate glances flooded her
entire being with an overwhelming and mad desire for joy. She
abandoned herself to him with the passiveness of a fascinated
creature, without a word of protest or resistance, but also without
a consciousness of what she was doing; in a word, she was
hypnotized.

She did not even know what it was in him that she loved: the actor
masterfully playing upon her emotions and enthusiasm, or the man.
Janina did not think of this. She loved him because she loved him
and because he personified the theater and art for her.

It seemed to Janina that through his eyes she saw farther and
deeper. Her soul was growing (as the peasants describe certain
stages in the development of youth), so besides her distant plans of
fame in the future, she needed something for herself alone, she
needed to strengthen herself and support herself on some loving
heart which would at the same time serve as a stepping-stone for her
own elevation. She no longer felt lonely, for she could now reveal
to Wladek her most secret thoughts, dreams, and projects for the
future and go over various heroic roles together with him. He was a
sort of physical complement of her, and outlet for her excessive
energy and dreams.

Janina did not submerge and lose herself in Wladek's being, but
rather absorbed him into herself. And not for one moment did she
think that she had surrendered herself to him, that he was
henceforth her lover and lord and that she belonged to him! She did
not even consider whether he had a soul or not. It sufficed her to
know that he was handsome, popular, that he loved her and that she
needed him. Even in her most intimate confidences and whispers of
love there was a tone of unconscious superiority. She spoke with him
continually but almost never asked him for his opinion and very
seldom listened to his replies. Wladek could not understand this,
but he was conscious of it and it acted as an unpleasant restraint
upon him, for in spite of their intimate relation, he could not feel
at ease with her in his own way. It wounded his self-love, but he
had no way of remedying it. He possessed her body, but not her soul
that mysterious something, that love that gives itself for life and
eternity and makes of itself a footstool for the lover. This
attitude of Janina's irritated him, but nevertheless attracted him
so irresistibly that he doubled his pretenses of love, thinking that
by a larger dose of sentimental falsehood, and a better acting of
emotion he would at last captivate and conquer her completely.
However, he did not succeed in doing so.

Janina, aside from this love, gradually renounced everything, yet in
spite of that she felt content. She often suffered hunger, but it
was enough for her to have Wladek at her side and to become absorbed
in her role, to forget about the whole world.

The performance of Doctor Robin was postponed from day to day, for
the amateur who was to make his debut in it became ill. In the
meanwhile, other plays had to be given; so Janina was forced to
content herself with waiting. She was consumed by impatience and the
ambition to rise at once above the throng of her companions and was
also impelled by the hope of ending her poverty by this means and
finally, by the need of her own soul which had formed its own
conception of the character of "Mary" and had to give it forth.

Janina did not even pay attention to what was brewing behind the
scenes where every day schemes and projects for new companies were
formed, only to be abandoned after a few days. Krzykiewicz had
already delicately suggested to Janina on a few occasions that, if
she wished, she could secure an engagement with Ciepieszewski. She
declined, for she remembered Topolski's project and wished to wait
for its realization, knowing that he was counting on her for sure.

Topolski was in reality organizing a company. It was meant to be a
secret as yet, but everyone knew about it. It was openly said that
Mimi, Wawrzecki, Piesh with his wife, and a few of the younger
forces had already signed a contract and that Topolski had quietly
closed a deal for the Lubelsk Theater, a new building that had just
been opened. It was known for certain that Kotlicki and others had
advanced him the necessary capital.

Cabinski, of course, knew all about this and loudly ridiculed these
projects. He knew very well that he could win back all those who had
joined Topolski by merely giving them larger advances on their
salaries. He predicted that Topolski would not hold out for one
season and would go to smash, for he did not believe that anyone was
willing to loan him money for organizing a new company.

"There are no longer any such fools!" he said aloud with conviction.
What amused him most was Topolski's proposed reform of the theater
which he unceremoniously termed an idiocy. Cabinski knew the public
well and knew what it wanted.

Topolski held frequent soirees at his home to which he invited all
those whom he might need. But he did not yet speak openly about his
company, leaving that to Wawrzecki who treated the matter
enthusiastically as though it were his own and used it to taunt
Cabinski with and to create more frequent rumpuses about his overdue
salary.

Janina was present at a few of these evenings at Topolski's house,
but was bored by them, for the men would usually play cards, while
the women, if they were not gossiping or complaining, would enclose
themselves within a narrow circle for secret whispering from which
they barred Janina, fearing that she might betray something to
Cabinski, to whose home she went daily to give piano lessons.

At the last of these evenings, while they were having tea, Majkowska
quietly begged Janina to stay a little longer, promising that she
and Topolski would accompany her home.

Wladek never appeared at these affairs, for he was an open and
stanch supporter of Cabinski.

After all the rest had gone Topolski sat opposite Janina and began
to tell her about the company he was organizing.

"It will be an exemplary theater for true art! I have a splendid
ensemble of actors; I have made a contract for one of the best
theaters, the library is ready to be sent away and the costumes are
already half completed, hence we have almost all that is needed."

"What are you still lacking?" asked Janina, determining immediately
to ask for an engagement.

"A little money . . . a mere trifle of about a thousand rubles as a
working capital for the first month," answered Topolski.

"Couldn't you borrow it?"

"Yes . . . and that is precisely what I want to talk over with you
in a friendly way, for we already count you as one of us. I will
give you a good salary and alternating roles with Mela for I know
that you are a capable actress. You have the appearance, the voice
and the temperament, and, aside from intelligence, that is just what
is required to make an excellent actress."

"Oh thank you, thank you sincerely!" cried Janina beaming with joy.
And so elated was she that she kissed Majkowska, who, as was her
habit, was almost lying on the table and gazing absently at the
lamp.

"But you must help us!" said Topolski after a short pause.

"I? What can I do?" she asked in surprise.

"A great deal! If you only want to . . ." he answered.

"Well! if you say that I can, then, of course I shall be glad to
help, for it is not only my duty, but also in my own interest! But
I'm very curious to know what I can do."

"It's a question of that one thousand rubles. The money is already
assured, only there is one little condition . . ."

"What is it?" Janina asked curiously.

Topolski drew closer to her, took hold of her hands in a friendly
way and only then answered:

"Miss Janina not only our theater, but your entire artistic future
depends on this, so I will tell you frankly that there is someone
who is ready to give even two thousand rubles, but he said that he
would give them only to you personally, otherwise not at all."

"Who is that person?" she asked uneasily.

"Kotlicki!"

Janina dropped her head and for a while a deep silence reigned in
the room. Topolski gazed at her uneasily, while Majkowska had upon
her face an indescribably derisive smile.

Janina almost cried out with pain, so repulsive did that name and
proposal strike her and after a moment she arose from her chair and
said in a determined voice: "No! I will not go to Kotlicki . . . and
that which you have proposed to me is insulting and outrageous! Only
in the theater can people lose so entirely their moral sense as to
persuade others to base acts and purposely push them into the mire
of degradation, so that they themselves may profit. You have
miscalculated this time, my dear sir! I have not fallen so low as
that. What hurts me is that you could think even for a moment that I
would agree to go to Kotlicki, to Kotlicki, who is more repulsive to
me than the basest reptile!" she cried, carried away by passion.

"Miss Janina! Let us speak it over calmly and sensibly, without
getting excited."

"You dare to tell me not to get excited?"

"I must, for you are simply inexperienced; consequently that which I
ask of you appears to you as something monstrous, something that
will immediately sink you in the mud, dishonor you, and shame you."

"For God's sake, what is it then, if not just that!" Janina cried in
amazement.

"Let us stop playing a comedy, let us drop this game of
hide-and-seek and look at things as they are and we shall see that I
am not proposing anything out of the ordinary to you. What am I
asking of you? Merely that you go to Kotlicki for the money which is
to be the foundation of our common future, the money which will
create our theater for us and without which none of us can budge
from Warsaw. So what is there wrong in this? What wrong can there be
in that which will make almost all of us happy?"

"What? Is it possible that you do not see any wrong in the fact that
I, a woman should go alone to the home of a man? And for what will
he give me that one thousand or two thousand rubles?"

"When you lived with Glogowski no one regarded it as wrong. Now,
when you are living with Wladek who blames you for it? After all,
what is there so dreadfully dishonorable about it? We all live that
way; and are we thereby committing anything base? . . . No! for that
is a secondary thing, for we have something more important in our
minds: art!"

"No, I will not go!" answered Janina quietly, depressed by the
discovery that they all knew about her relation with Wladek.

She continued to listen to Topolski without hearing or understanding
his words. He began to expostulate with her, to beg, and to explain
that they were all sacrificing their very lives for the theater,
something more than the mere whim of a woman. He pointed out to her
that by her refusal she would deal a mortal blow to the newly
organized company; that they were all counting on her and would be
grateful to her until death, for by her sacrifice she would insure
the welfare of dozens of people; that the new theater would be
connected with her name. He wished by all means to break down her
opposition which he could not understand, but Janina remained
unmoved.

"If my life itself depended on it, I would not go; I would prefer to
die!" said Janina with final determination.

"Well then, good-bye!" answered Topolski angrily.

Janina kept looking at him and still wanted to explain herself more
fully, but Majkowska threw her cloak over her shoulders for her,
brutally placed her hat on her head, and showering her with insults,
opened the door widely before her.

Janina like an automaton, permitted her to do what she wanted with
her and, like an automaton she walked down the stairs and along the
streets to her home.

She felt sorry for the new company and regretted the prospect that
she was losing by breaking with Topolski but at the same time she
felt an unbearable shame consuming her at the thought that these
people should take her for such a degraded being by daring to make
such proposals to her and expecting that she would fulfill them.

Janina could not calm herself. That night she dreamed now of
Kotlicki, now of Wladek, then again of the theater. She heard how
all were cursing and reviling her, she saw as it were, a band of
people covered with rags and with hatred glowing in their eyes,
pursuing her with curses and trying to beat her. In those vaguely
outlined faces she recognized Mela, Topolski, Mimi, and Wawrzecki.
Again, she dreamed that she was walking along the street and that
everybody was staring at her so strangely and so horribly that she
felt like sinking into the earth to avoid their glances; but she had
no strength to move and that multitude slowly filed by her while
Topolski stood pointing at her and crying in a loud and derisive
voice: "Behold! she lived with Glogowski and is now the mistress of
Wladek!"

Janina could not bear that; she screamed wildly in her sleep for she
saw, as it were, her father approaching her with Krenska at his
side, pointing at her and calling: "She lived with Glogowski and now
is the mistress of Wladek!"

"God, oh God!" she moaned, writhing with the torment of that dream.

And the throng of familiar faces continued to grow. There appeared
the priest from Bukowiec, the teachers of her boarding school, her
former companions and Grzesikiewicz. All, all passed by her hastily
and stared at her with such a dreadful, horrible smile that it
pierced her like a dagger and scourged her like a whip.

Janina awoke with tear-streaming eyes and utterly exhausted.

Before the rehearsal Wladek came to see her. For the first time she
threw herself into his arms of her own accord.

"They all know!" she whispered, hiding her face upon his breast.

Wladek immediately surmised what she meant and answered: "Well, what
of it? Is it a crime?"

He sat down in an ill humor, began to rub his knee and tossed about
angrily in his chair.

Janina noticed his mood and, forgetting about herself, inquired:
"What is the matter with you? Are you ill?"

"There is nothing the matter with me, only I owe someone a few
rubles and am unable to pay them back. I can't ask my mother for the
money, for she is sick again and it would only finish her! Cabinski
will not give it to me either, and I am at my wit's end!"

He was, of course, lying, for he had been playing cards the whole
night long and had lost all he had. Janina remembered the help she
had received from Glogowski, so without hesitation she took off her
gold watch and chain and laid it before Wladek.

"I have no money. Take this and pawn it and pay your debt and what
you have left over bring me back, for I also have nothing," she said
heartily.

"No, I shall not take it! What do you want to do that for? I really
don't need it. . . . My dear child! . . ." remonstrated Wladek in
his first impulse of honesty.

"Please take it. . . . If you love me you will take it."

Wladek demurred a little while yet, but the thought struck him that
with the money he might play again to win back what he had lost.

"No! What would that look like!" he whispered, his resistance
growing ever weaker.

"Go right away and on your way back stop in for me and we shall have
breakfast together," urged Janina.

Wladek kissed her, as though he were embarrassed, muttered something
about gratitude, but finally took the watch and went to pawn it.

He returned quickly with thirty rubles. He immediately borrowed
twenty from Janina and wanted even to give her a receipt for them,
but she became so angry that he had to apologize to her. Then they
went out to breakfast.

Thenceforward they lived together. At the theater everyone knew
about their relation, but it was such a usual thing, that no one
paid attention to it. Only Sowinska would sometimes taunt Janina on
the score and slight her and, whereas not so long ago she had done
nothing but praise Wladek, she now told the vilest sort of tales
about him. She delighted in tormenting Janina in this manner, and
avenged herself in this way for the loss of her son's love.

At last it was announced that stage rehearsals of Doctor Robin were
to begin. Wladek brought this information to Janina, because for a
few days she had been very weak and had not left her home at all.
She felt an oppressive drowsiness and exhaustion and an unbearable
pain in her back. Then again such a feeling of helplessness and
discouragement would possess her that she wanted to cry and had no
desire to stir from her bed, but lay for whole days, gazing blankly
at the ceiling. The humming sensation in her head returned and she
suffered such a burning thirst that nothing could quench it.
However, on hearing that she was to take part in the play, Janina
immediately felt well and strong again.

She went to the rehearsal, trembling with fear, but on seeing the
person who was to play "Garrick," she quickly mastered herself. This
amateur was hardly more than a boy, skinny, awkward, and
simple-minded. He lisped and waddled about like a duck, but since he
was the cousin of one of the influential journalists who backed him,
he regarded everybody at the theater with a haughty expression and
treated them with an air of condescension. The members of the
company delicately ridiculed him to his face and laughed loudly at
him behind his back.

Everybody was present at the rehearsal, as though they had all
agreed upon it beforehand.

No sooner did Janina enter upon the stage than Majkowska
ostentatiously withdrew behind the scenes, while Topolski did not so
much as nod his head to her in greeting. Janina realized that
relations with them were severed for good, but she had no time to
think about it, for the rehearsal began immediately. Despite the
fact that she had at first intended merely to recite her role,
Janina could not now refrain from marking it, at least in its broad
outlines.

She was irritated by the fact that everyone was looking at her and
that from all directions numerous eyes were fixed upon her. It
seemed to her that she saw ridicule in their glances and derision on
all those lips, so at moments she would start nervously and break
out with all the force of her temperament, or again, she would speak
too softly.

Majkowska stood there hissing and laughing together with Zarnecka
and loudly voicing her opinion of Janina's acting. Topolski, the
stage-manager, made her leave and reenter the stage several times,
for in her excitement, she did not enter properly.

Janina knew what they were doing, so she did not take very much to
heart Mela's ridicule or Topolski's pedantic instructions. She
played on and rendered her role forcibly, if a little unevenly.

There followed a characteristic silence; nobody laughed nor jested
loudly.

The stage-director walked up and down behind the scenes contentedly
rubbing his hands and grunting: "Good, good, but she does not yet
put enough pathos into it!"

"Why, don't you hear she is already shouting, not speaking!"
Majkowska jeered at him.

"My dear madame! You go into convulsions on the stage, and none of
us, out of politeness, blames you for it," answered Stanislawski for
his friend.

"Not that way! Who waves his arms in that manner? Are you trying to
make a windmill of yourself?" cried Topolski.

"Don't discourage her, remember it is her first rehearsal!" cried
Cabinska from the seats.

"You walk about the stage like a goose!" again remarked the
irritated Topolski to Janina.

"She wouldn't be at all bad as a washerwoman!" hissed Mela.

In spite of all, although she felt tears of wrath rising to her
eyes, Janina played on, without letting herself be confused and
never for a moment losing her presence of mind.

When she had finished, Cabinska ostentatiously kissed her and began
to praise her aloud so that Majkowska could hear: "I congratulate
you and have no doubt that you will play the part excellently!"

"Work out the details a little better," Stanislawski advised her.

"Why, this is merely a rehearsal! I already have the entire
character worked out in my head."

"We shall now have a real heroine, for one that is beautiful and
talented at the same time!" cried Rosinska in a very loud voice.

Majkowska glared at her furiously, but did not reply.

Janina felt so happy that she had a desire to kiss everybody.

In two days the performance was to take place. That interval was
like one immense vista of light in which Janina seemed eagerly
absorbed. It seemed to her that she was entirely satisfied.

"At last! At last! Now, all my poverty and humiliation will end!"
Janina whispered rapturously to herself. She thought that a
repertory of roles would immediately be assigned to her. She gave
free reign to her imagination and already saw herself upon some
pinnacle. She was already in that promised land of powerful emotions
about which she dreamed every day in that realm that swarmed before
her eyes with a stately throng of heroic figures, superhuman
passions, and dazzling beauty, a realm in which there reigned a
perfect harmony between dreams and reality.

Janina smiled with pity at those days of want and poverty, as though
she were bidding farewell to them forever. Everything that
surrounded her, even Wladek, paled into insignificance before her
fascinated eyes.

A thousand times she repeated the role of "Mary." She sat for hours
at a time before the mirror, practicing the appropriate facial
expression and became feverish with impatience while awaiting the
arrival of the momentous day. At night, Janina would sit half asleep
in her bed and gaze before her. It seemed to her that she saw the
crowded theater and the representatives of the press, that she heard
the quiet murmurs of the public, saw their enraptured glances, and
that she entered the stage and played. . . . Half unconsciously she
would repeat the words of her role, kindle with ardor, declaim them
with exaltation. Then, overcome by drowsiness again, she would smile
through tears of happiness for she heard most distinctly that
well-known and thrilling thunder of applause and cries of:
"Orlowska! Orlowska!" And with that smile on her face she would fall
asleep and wake again to continue her dreams.

Janina sold whatever she could to buy the appropriate costume for
her part. With a smile of contentment she would drive away Wladek so
that he might not interfere with her.

On that day which was to be for her so important and decisive,
Cabinski, before the general rehearsal, took away her part and gave
it to Majkowska.

Intrigue and envy had gained their end. Cabinski was forced to
yield, for Topolski had threatened to leave the company immediately
unless he took away the role from Janina and gave it to Majkowska.
It was the way he chose to avenge himself because of Janina's
refusal to go to Kotlicki.

Struck to the very heart, Janina almost lost her reason under this
blow. She began to stagger on her feet and felt that the whole
theater was whirling about her and that everything was sinking with
her into a bottomless darkness. She cast a glance of unspeakable
grief at all those about her, as though seeking for help, but on the
faces of most of the members of the company there was an expression
of merriment over what they thought was a splendid joke, and the
beastly joy of cretins at the suppression of talent. They mocked the
defeated aspirant with their glances; burning taunts and jibes began
to fall from all sides like stones upon her soul crushed by an
unexpected blow. Brutal laughs arose, scourging her as with a whip
and all the baseness of human delight in the pain of others found
its object and outlet.

And Janina stood there without a word or motion, with that dreadful
pain in her heart in which it seemed as though all the arteries had
been torn open and were flooding it with the blood of despair.

She collected enough strength to ask: "Why may I not play the part?"

"Because you may not and that settles it!" answered Cabinski curtly.
And he immediately left the theater, because he dreaded a scene and
felt a trifle sorry for Janina.

She remained standing behind the scenes with that overwhelming and
sharp pain of disappointment tearing at her soul. She felt such an
emptiness and loneliness that at moments it seemed to her as though
she were all alone in the world and that something had pinned her to
the earth with an immense weight and was crushing her down, that she
was falling with lightning speed to the bottom of some deep abyss
where a grayish-green whirlpool was dimly roaring.

Her thoughts and feelings were breaking and snapping under the
tremendous strain and tears of hopeless abandonment flooded her
eyes. She went to the dressing-room and sat down in the darkest
corner.

Her dreams were crumbling to pieces: those wonderful realms were
vanishing and sinking away in the misty distance, those enchanting
visions were waving like torn rags in her brain and soul.

The dull grayness of the dirty walls and decorations about her and
the throng of shabby, jeering beggars seemed to saturate and oppress
her whole being. She felt so utterly weary, broken, sick, and
helpless that she went out into the hall to look for Wladek to take
her home, but she could not find him. He had cautiously disappeared,
so Janina went back to the dressing-room and sat there in a daze.

"Beware of dreams! Beware of water!" she repeated to herself,
remembering with difficulty who had told her that. And suddenly,
Janina became pale and reeled back for such a chaos began to whirl
in her brain that she thought she would go mad . . . .

For a long time she sat in a senseless torpor and wept without being
able to restrain herself, for after partly regaining her
consciousness the memory of all her sufferings and disappointments
came back to her again. At last utterly worn out, and, lulled by the
silence that enveloped the theater after the rehearsal, she fell
asleep.

She was awakened by Rosinska who on that day had come earlier to the
dressing-room, for she was to begin the play. When she saw the
sleeping girl, the older actress was moved to pity. The remaining
shreds of her womanhood covered by the artificiality of theatrical
life, awoke in her at the sight of that pale face, worn by poverty
and dejection.

"Miss Janina--" whispered Rosinska tenderly.

Janina arose and began nervously to wipe away the traces of tears
from her face.

"Have you not seen Mr. Niedzielski?" she asked Rosinska.

"No. My poor child, so that is what they have done to you! But you
must not take it so much to heart. If you want to be an artist you
must bear a great deal, suffer a great deal. My dear, if you only
knew what I had to go through and still have to. If you wanted to
grieve over all the afflictions that come to you, become irritated
over all the gossip they spread about you or weep over every
intrigue in which they try to entangle you, you would have neither
any tears, nor eyes, nor strength left! There's no use crying over
it, for things can't be any different in the theater! Moreover, you
haven't lost anything by it! That one disappointment makes you
richer by one more experience."

"Perhaps they are right, after all. I must have no talent whatever,
if Cabinski took away the role from me . . . ."

"It is just because you have a talent that they played this trick on
you. I heard what the cousin of that amateur said at the first
rehearsal."

"What good will all that do me, when I can't play and have nothing
to live on."

"That is all the doing of Majkowska. She forced Cabinski to take the
role away from you."

"I know she bears me a grudge, but I can't conceive why she should
revenge herself in such an inhuman way!"

"You don't know her yet. . . . I don't know what you two quarreled
about, but I do know that when she saw you on the stage at the first
rehearsal she became so greatly afraid that you might eclipse her
that she immediately began to lay plans for your undoing. I saw how
she hung about that amateur, how she fawned upon his cousin and
Cabinski, how she kissed the hands of the directress! I saw with my
own eyes! Did you ever hear of anyone degrading one's self in that
manner? But she attained her end. She has already done away with
many another in the same way. You probably do not know what I, an
actress of long standing and with so large a repertory, have to
suffer on her account. You could not notice what was being schemed,
for it was all done so quickly that besides myself, probably no one
else knew about it. Such a creature as she always has luck! But wait
I will fix her to-day! I'll pay her back for the both of us!"

The dressing-room slowly began to fill with actresses, their noisy
chatter and the smell of powder and pigments that were being warmed
over the candles. They were beginning to dress.

At last Majkowska came in, stately and triumphant, with a bouquet in
her hands and roses in her corsage. Seeing Janina sitting alongside
of Rosinska she frowned and cried angrily: "If I am not mistaken,
this is not the dressing-room of the chorus girls."

"You are mistaken, you pantomime artist!" retorted Rosinska.

"I am not speaking to you."

"But I am answering you. Please stay here," she said, turning to
Janina who wanted to leave.

"Don't you begin with me! Do you think I'm going to dress together
with novices, eh?"

"Wait, you'll get a separate cell with a strait-jacket of your own.
You can't miss it."

"Shut your mouth! You forty-year-old simp."

"My age is none of your business, you ruined heroine!"

"She looks like a drenched hen on the stage and yet dares to raise
her voice here."

Everybody in the dressing-room was shaking with laughter, while
Rosinska and Majkowska began to quarrel ever more vulgarly, without
however interrupting for a moment their make-up and hasty dressing.

Janina listened to the quarrel in silence. She hardly felt any
grievance toward Majkowska for depriving her of the role, but only a
physical aversion to her person. Majkowska now appeared to her so
filthy, brazen, and base that even her voice sounded disgusting.

Only when they began to play Doctor Robin, Janina stood behind the
scenes to see what would be done with her role. It is impossible to
describe that subtle, excruciating pain that rent her soul when she
saw Majkowska as "Mary" on the stage. She felt that that other woman
was tearing out piecemeal from her brain and heart every word, every
gesture, every pose and accent.

"They are mine, mine!" she breathed, unable to help herself. "Mine!"
And she devoured Mela with her eyes and then closed them so that she
might not behold any more of it, nor torment herself with
remembering the role as she had conceived it. "The thief!" she
finally whispered so loudly that Majkowska trembled on the stage.

Rosinska sat behind the scenes on the other side of the stage. As
soon as Majkowska entered there began a scene upon the stage for she
repeated each word after Mela in an undertone and in a false
intonation, laughed aloud at her acting, ridiculed and mimicked her
gestures.

At first Majkowska paid no attention to this, but finally she could
no longer refrain from looking behind the scenes and could not help
hearing that raillery and mimicry of herself. She could not catch
the prompter's words and stopped short in the middle of a sentence,
while Rosinska continued to crowd her ever more mercilessly.

Majkowska grew furious with impotent rage, but her playing was
becoming worse all the time and she felt it, and began to throw
herself about the stage as though she were obsessed. Behind every
scene she saw faces laughing at her; even Dobek in his box stopped
his mouth with his hand so heartily amused was he by what was going
on. That deprived Majkowksa of the rest of her self-control.

As soon as she left the stage she threw herself at Rosinska with her
fists. There arose such a rumpus that the men had to part the two
actresses, for they had begun pulling the hair out of each other's
wigs. Majkowska was forcibly led to the dressing-room. She raged
like a mad woman and got an attack of hysteria. She smashed mirrors,
tore up costumes, and tossed about so violently that they had to
call a doctor and tie her hands and feet.

Cabinska pulled out the rest of his hair in despair, but the actors
laughed in their dressing-rooms and enjoyed themselves immensely.

The curtain had to be lowered in the middle of the play, and
Topolski, almost pale with anger announced to the audience: "Ladies
and Gentlemen! Because of the sudden and serious indisposition of
Miss Majkowska, Doctor Robin cannot be concluded. The following play
on the program will immediately begin."

Janina despite the satisfaction that she felt at the fiasco of her
enemy, began to feel sorry for Majkowska when she saw her senseless
and suffering. She was not yet enough of an actress to feel
indifferent to it, so she went to her, but seeing in the room the
doctor, and Cabinski, who was quarreling with Rosinska she hastily
retreated.

Rosinska, Wolska, and Mirowska declared outright to Cabinski that if
Majkowska remained in the company they would leave it the very next
day.

Cabinski fled, but he next ran into Stanislawski and Krzykiewicz who
told him the same with the addition that they would not remain a day
longer with him for they were ashamed to be in a company where such
public scandals occurred.

The director almost went crazy, for he was not prepared for such a
thing. He tried to squirm out of it as best as he could, made
promises, gave orders on the treasurer to all who wanted them and,
spying Janina called aloud to her with the object of mollifying
somewhat his previous conduct: "If you want something from the
treasurer, I will give you an order, for I must leave right away."

Janina asked for five rubles. He did not even so much as make a wry
face but gave it to her and immediately ran off to Pepa, but on the
way he was again tackled by that amateur and his cousin and things
began to grow so noisy behind the scenes that the public listened
uneasily, wondering what was the matter.

The performance was concluded amid the silence of the audience; not
one handclap sounded.

Janina, on leaving the box office with the money, met Niedzielska
hobbling slowly along.

She stopped and wanted to greet her, but Niedzielska looked at her
threateningly and barked: "What do you want, you! you!" She coughed
violently, threatened Janina with her cane with which she supported
herself, and dragged herself on.

Janina unconsciously looked about her, to see if she could spy
Wladek anywhere, but he had already vanished. She had not seen him
since that morning.

Wladek purposely avoided her, for he had reached the decisive
conclusion that it was better to have intercourse only with ordinary
women, for with them it was not necessary to restrain one's self, to
pretend, and to be continually forced to take everything into
account. Moreover, Janina had made a fiasco as an actress and
continued to be nothing but a chorus girl, and his mother had
threatened to disinherit him because of her.

Janina gazed for a long time after the old woman, who, no doubt, was
going to seek her son, and then she went slowly home.

CHAPTER X

Janina lay sick in bed.

It seemed to her as though she were at the bottom of a well and,
from those depths into which they had shoved her she could see only
the pale, distant blue of the sky, sometimes complete darkness,
sometimes the twinkling of the stars, then again some wings, flying
past, would cast a shadow over her eyes so that she lost knowledge
of everything. She only felt that those eddies of life without, its
voices, noises, cries, fears, and despair oozed down the smooth
sides of the well and flowed into her soul as into a reservoir,
penetrating her whole soul with an unconscious pain which she,
however, felt with every fiber of her being.

The days dragged on as slowly as though they were strung on the
chain of ages, as slowly as they drag on for those who have lost
everything, even hope.

Janina sent word to the director that she was sick, but no one came
to see her. Cabinska merely sent Wicek to say that Yadzia was
longing for her piano lessons, and nothing more.

There, they were playing, learning, creating something and living!
Here, she lay sunken in a complete apathy, like a crushed soul that
hardly dares at moments to think that it still exists and then again
sinks into an agony which cannot, however, end in the oblivion of
death.

Janina was not really physically ill, for nothing pained her, but
was dying from inner exhaustion. It seemed to her as though she had
spent the whole store of her strength in those three months of
theatrical life and that she was now dying from the hunger of her
soul that had nothing left with which to keep it alive.

Throughout those long days, throughout that endless agony of silent
nights she slowly pondered the nature of everyone whom she had met
here; and that slow, but entirely one-sided, cognizance of her
environment filled her with bitter sadness.

"There is no happiness on earth . . ." Janina whispered to herself,
and it seemed to her that hitherto she had had a cataract blinding
her eyes which fate had now brutally torn off. She now saw, but
there were moments in which she yearned for her former blindness and
groping in the dark.

"There is no happiness!" she repeated bitterly, and rebellious
pessimism mastered her soul entirely.

Everywhere Janina saw only evil and baseness. There passed before
her the forms of all her acquaintances and she scornfully thrust
them all down into one pit, not excluding Wladek. He had dropped in
only once to see her and began to excuse himself for his absence,
but she impatiently interrupted him and asked him to go away.

She already knew him well enough and wondered as the thought
occurred to her that she had ever loved him.

"Why? Why?" Janina asked herself.

Shame and regret began to fill her at the thought that she had
fallen so low and for him. He now appeared to her miserable and
common. She could not forgive herself.

"What fatality placed him in my path of life?" Janina asked herself
further. In her own eyes she felt deeply humiliated.

"I did not love him," she pondered and a shudder of disgust shook
her. He began to grow hateful to her.

And the theater also, lost a great deal of its glamor for Janina in
those hours of reflection. She now looked at it through the prism of
those continual quarrels and behind-the-scenes intrigues, through
the vanity of its priests and through her own disappointments.

"It is not as I used to see it formerly!" she lamented.

Everything became increasingly smaller and grayer to Janina's inner
vision. Everywhere she began to discover rags, sham, and falsehood.
People obscured everything for her with their baseness and
pettiness. She no longer desired to reign as a queen upon the stage.

"What is that? What is that?" she whispered to herself and saw a
motley, heterogeneous public that was indifferent to the quality of
a play. It came to the theater to amuse itself and laugh; it
hankered for clownishness and the circus.

"What is that? Comedianism for profit and for the amusement of the
multitude," Janina answered herself. The stage now appeared to her
as a real arena for the feats of clowns and trained monkeys.

"I wanted to be an entertainer of the mob! And where does art come
in? What is pure art, the ideal, for which hundreds of people
sacrifice their lives?"

"What is it and where is it to be found?" she asked herself
uneasily, beginning to see that everything is rather an amusement
than an aim in itself.

Literature, poetry, music, painting, and all the fine arts passed
before Janina's mind. She could not separate their utilitarian
aspect from their purely artistic one. She saw that all artists
played, sang, and created only to amuse that vast, brutal, mob. For
it they sacrificed their lives, their strength, and their dreams;
for it they struggled and suffered, lived and died.

To Janina that vast multitude of Grzesikiewiczs, Kotlickis, and
counselors, appeared in its ignorance and low instincts like a cruel
master who, with a half-mocking, half-favoring smile, looked down
upon that entire human throng of artists that painted, played,
recited, created, and begged with a nervous look for his favor and
recognition.

And she saw one immense wave of human beings spreading over the wide
plains of earth, swaying slowly and going nowhere; and on the other
side all those artists who were passing through the mob in all
directions, loudly proclaiming something, singing with inspired
voices, pointing to the expanse of heaven, calling attention to the
stars, trying to bring about some order in this disorderly, teeming
multitude, opening paths among it, imploring it in deep tones. But
the multitude either laughed or merely nodded its assent, but did
not budge from its place. It surged and pushed about and trampled
the artists underfoot.

"What is that? Why?" Janina asked herself, greatly terrified. "If
they do not need us then we ought to let them alone, keeping
ourselves apart from them and living only for ourselves and with
ourselves." But again everything became confused in her mind and she
could not conceive how it would be possible to live apart from the
rest of humanity and concluded that it would not be worth living at
all in that way. Her thoughts whirled in confusion through her
brain.

Sowinska, who now took care of her with motherly solicitude, came in
and interrupted her frenzied thoughts.

"Why don't you go home?" she advised Janina sincerely.

"Never!" answered Janina.

"Why should you wear yourself out in that way? You will rest a
little, gain new strength, and return again to the theater."

"No," answered Janina quietly.

"I forgot to tell you that old Mrs. Niedzielska was here to see me
yesterday."

"Do you know her?" asked the younger woman.

"Not at all, but she had some business with me. Oh, she is a sly
fox, that old hag!" added Sowinska.

"Perhaps she is a bit too miserly, but otherwise she is a rather
honest woman."

"Honest? You'll find out yet for yourself how honest she is."

"Why?" asked Janina, but without curiosity, for it didn't at all
interest her now.

"I will only say this much . . . that she does not love you in the
least, not in the least!"

"That's strange, for I never did her any wrong," answered Janina.

Sowinska's demeanor suddenly changed, for she glanced angrily at
Janina and wanted to say something sharp, but seeing that Janina's
face wore an expression of complete indifference, she refrained and
left the room.

Janina thought about Bukowiec.

"I have no home," she thought, even without bitterness. "The whole
wide world is my home," she added, but suddenly remembered what
Grzesikiewicz had told her about her father and stirred as though
some hidden pain had awakened in her. An uneasiness, not such as
besets one on the eve of some event, but such as one feels on
remembering some good that one has lost forever, filled Janina's
heart. It was the pain of the past like the quiet remembrance of the
dead.

But those memories of Bukowiec and those lonely nights when she
dreamed, forgetting about everything, and created for herself such
wondrous worlds, now flashed upon her mind in all their vividness.
Only the memory of that exuberant and majestic nature, those vast
fields, and those silent glens full of murmurs and bird songs,
verdure, and wild grandeur swathed Janina in melancholy and lulled
her weary soul with its charms.

The woods in which she was reared, those dim depths full of
unspeakable wonders, those gigantic trees to which she was united by
a thousand affinities, outlined themselves in her mind ever more
powerfully. Janina longed for them now and listened through the
nights, for it seemed to her that she heard the grave autumnal
murmur of the forest, the somnolent rustling of its branches. It
seemed that she felt within herself the slow, endless swaying of
those giant trees, the soft motions of the verdure bathed in golden
sunlight, the joyous cry of the birds, the fragrance of the young
pine saplings and juniper bushes the whole leisurely life of nature.

Janina lay for whole hours at a time, without a word, thought, or
motion, for her soul was there in those verdant woods. She wandered
over the meadows covered with wild raspberries and waving grass,
strayed across the fields where the rye grew high like a wood,
swaying and murmuring in the breeze and gleaming with dew in the
sunlight, penetrated the groves full of the pungent smell of the
resin. She followed each road, each boundary, each wood path,
greeted everything that lived there and cried out to the fields,
woods, the hills, and the sky: "I have come! I have come!" smiling
as though she had found a lost happiness.

These invigorating memories restored Janina's health almost
entirely. On the eighth day she felt strong enough for a walk. She
was longing for the fresh air, the verdure unsoiled by city dust,
the sunlight, and the vast open spaces. She felt that the city was
stifling her, that here, at every step, she had to limit her own ego
and continually struggle against all the barriers of custom and
dependence.

Janina passed through the Place of Arms and, going beyond the
Citadel, she walked along the damp sand dunes to Bielany.

An unbroken silence enveloped her on all sides. The sun shone
brightly and warmly, but from the water there blew a brisk,
invigorating breeze.

She gazed at the quiet river flecked with spots of white foam and at
the indistinct silhouettes of boats trailing along in midstream. She
breathed in deeply the calm that surrounded her and felt a
resurgence of her wasted strength.

Janina lay down upon the yellowish sand of the bank and, gazing at
the gleaming expanse of waters, forgot everything. It seemed to her
as though she were flowing on with the current of the river, passing
the shores, houses, and woods and hurrying on continually into a
blue and boundless distance like the illimitable expanse of heaven
that hung over her. It seemed to her as though she no longer
remembered anything, but felt only the ineffable delight of rocking
with the waves.

Janina suddenly awoke from that half dream, for there passed near
her an old man with a fishing rod in his hand. He looked at her in
passing, sat down almost beside her on the very edge of the river,
cast his line into the water and waited.

He had so honest a face that she felt a desire to speak to him and
was thinking how to begin, when he addressed her first: "Would you
like to take a trip over to the other side?"

Janina glanced at him questioningly.

"Aha! I see that we don't understand each other. I thought that you
wanted to drown yourself," he said.

"I wasn't even thinking about death," she replied quietly.

"Ha! ha! It would be an unexpected honor for the river."

He adjusted his fishing tackle and became silent, centering all his
attention on the fish that had begun to circle about the bait and
the hook.

A deeper silence, as it were, diffused itself about and began to
fill Janina's soul with a blissful calm. She felt that an immense
goodness was pervading her, that the majesty of that expanse of
heaven, of the waters and the verdure was uplifting her and drawing
from her breast a hymn of thanksgiving and the pure joy of living,
free from all earthly things.

The old man cast a sidelong glance at her and on his narrow lips
there hovered an unfathomable smile.

Janina felt that look and in turn glanced at him. Their eyes met in
a long and friendly gaze.

She felt a sudden and irresistible impulse to reveal the depths of
her soul to him.

She moved closer to him and said quietly: "I was not thinking about
death."

"Then you were seeking calm?"

"Yes, I wanted to take a look at nature and to forget."

"Forget about what?"

"About life!" Janina whispered hoarsely and tears of violent grief
filled her eyes.

"You are a child. It must have been some disappointment in love,
some thwarted ambition, or perhaps the lack of a dinner that put you
in such a tragic mood."

"All that taken together is not enough to make one feel very, very
unhappy," answered Janina.

"All that taken together is one big zero, for according to my way of
thinking there is nothing that can make wholly unhappy an individual
who knows himself," he said.

"Who are you . . . that is, what do you do?" he asked, after pausing
a while.

"I am in the theater," answered the girl.

"Aha! the world of comedy! Simulation which you afterwards take for
reality. Chimeras! All that warps the human soul. The greatest
actors are merely phonographs wound up sometimes by sages, sometimes
by geniuses, but most often by fools. And they speak to even greater
fools. Actors, artists, creators are merely blind instruments of
nature which uses them to reveal itself and for ends known to itself
alone! To them it seems that they are something real, but that is a
sad deception, for they are merely instruments which are thrown into
the discard when they are no longer needed or have lost their
usefulness."

"Who are you?" Janina asked, almost unknowingly, stirred by his
words.

"An old man as you see, who fishes and likes to chat. Oh yes, I am
very old. I come here for a few hours every day in the summertime,
if the weather is fair, and catch fish, if they let themselves be
caught. What good will it do you to know who I am? My name will tell
you nothing. In the sum total of humanity I am merely a pawn which
is given a certain number upon entrance into this world and retains
the same at the time of its exit. I am a cell of feeling long ago
registered and classified by my fellow-beings as a 'ne'er-do-well,'"
he said, smiling.

"I had no intention of offending you by my question."

"I never get angry about anything. Only foolish people anger
themselves or rejoice. A man ought merely to look on, observe, and
go his own way," he added, drawing a gudgeon from his hook.

Janina was a bit chilled by his gravity and by his decisive way of
speaking which admitted of no discussion.

"Are you from the Warsaw Theater?" he asked, throwing out his line
again.

"No, I am in Cabinski's company. No doubt you know him."

"I don't know him, nor have I heard about him."

"Is it possible that you have never heard anything about Cabinski,
nor read about the Tivoli?" asked Janina greatly surprised that
there could be anyone in Warsaw who did not know and was not
interested in the theater.

"I do not go to the theater at all and I do not read the papers," he
answered.

"Impossible!"

"One can see right away that you must not be more than twenty years
old, for you cry out in amazement, 'Impossible!' and look at me as
though I were a lunatic or a barbarian."

"But after talking with you, it was impossible for me to assume even
for a moment that . . ."

"That I am not interested in the theater, yes, that I do not read
the papers," he concluded for her.

"I can't even understand why."

"Well, because that does not interest me at all," he answered
simply.

"Are you not at all interested in what is going on in the world, in
how people are living, what they are doing, what they are thinking?"

"No. To you that doubtless appears monstrous; nevertheless it is
entirely natural. Do our peasants interest themselves in the theater
or in world affairs? They do not. Isn't that true?"

"Yes, but they are peasants and that is entirely different."

"It is the same thing, merely with this addition; that for them your
famous and great men do not exist at all and it doesn't make the
slightest difference to them whether Newton or Shakespeare ever
lived or not. And they are just as well off with their ignorance,
just as well."

Janina became silent, for what he had said appeared to her
paradoxical and not very true.

"What will I learn from your newspapers and your theaters? Merely
that people love, hate, and fight one another the same as ever; that
evil and brute force continue to reign as they always have done;
that the world and life are merely a big mill in which brains and
consciences are ground to dust. It is more comfortable to know
nothing rather than that," he continued.

"But is it right for anyone to seclude himself so egoistically from
all that is going on in the world?" asked Janina.

"Precisely in that lies wisdom. To desire nothing for ourselves,
care for nothing, and be indifferent that is what we ought to aim
at."

"Is it possible to attain such a state of complete apathy?"

"It is attained through the experience of life and through thinking.
Remember that the smallest pleasure, a mere momentary satisfaction,
always costs us more dearly than it is really worth. The average man
will not, for instance, pay a thousand rubles for a pear, for he
knows that would be an insane absurdity, and moreover, he knows the
relative value of a thousand rubles and of a pear. But out of the
capital of his life he is ready to squander thousands for mere
trifles--for a light love affair that lasts only as long as it takes
a two cent pear to ripen, for he has never considered the almost
priceless value of his own vital energy and becomes blind to all,
like a bull when the toreador flashes a red rag before his eyes, and
pays for that blindness with a part of his life. The majority of
human beings die, not from natural necessity, like a lamp when its
oil has burned out, but from bankruptcy, from squandering their
powers and strength on foolish things that are worth a thousand
times less than one day of life."

"I would not want to live such a cold and calculated life without
frenzies, dreams, and love."

"The world would not come to an end, if people did not love."

"It would be better to kill one's self than to live and dry up like
a tree."

"Suicide is the vulgar cry of the animal who suffers; it is the
rebellion of the atom against the laws of the universe. One must
allow the candle of one's life to burn out slowly and calmly to the
very end--in that lies happiness."

"So that is happiness?" asked Janina, feeling a sudden chill
penetrating her soul.

"Yes. Peace is happiness. To negate everything, to kill one's
desires and passions, to tear out of oneself illusions and whims
that is the way to attain it. It means to hold fast your soul in the
grip of self-knowledge and prevent it from dissipating itself in
foolish things."

"Who would want to live under such a yoke? What soul could endure
it?"

"The soul is knowledge."

"So you advocate nothing but stony indifference and peace! Never to
know of feel anything else but this! No, I prefer the ordinary trend
of life."

"There is still another way: the best remedy for our mental
sufferings is to expand our hearts, to become one with nature."

"Let us drop that. I don't like to speak about it, for it stirs me
too strongly."

They both remained silent for a long while. The old man gazed into
the water and mumbled something to himself, while Janina was rapt in
thought.

"All is foolishness," he began anew. "Behold and wonder at the
water, if nothing more; it will suffice you for a long time. Observe
the birds, the stars, and the elements; trace the growth of the
trees, listen to the wind, drink in perfumes and hues and everywhere
you will find unparalleled, everlasting miracles. It will replace
for you entirely life among people. Only do not gaze at nature with
the eyes of the vulgar, for then the most beautiful bird songs will
sound to you like a mere screeching; the most majestic forest will
seem nothing but so much kindling wood; in animals you will see
nothing but meat for food; the meadows will appear to you as so much
hay; for then, instead of feeling, you will be calculating."

"All human beings are like that."

"There are a few who can read from the book of nature and find in it
sustenance for their life."

Again they became silent.

The sun began to sink behind the hills on the opposite shore and to
shine ever more coldly as though it were burnt out, dyeing the water
blood red with its parting rays. The thickets seemed to shrink, for
they appeared to grow lower and wider at their bases. The yellowish
sands on the river bank became shrouded by the gray dusk. The
distant horizon seemed to sink away in the mists which rose up as
though they were the smoke of the burnt-out, smoldering sun. An even
deeper silence descended and enveloped the earth in sleep, as though
it were weary of the labors of the day.

Janina pondered over the words of the old man and a quiet, gloomy
sadness filled her heart and cast a vague and shadowy fear over her
mind. A feeling of passive submission and torpor overcame her.

She arose to go, for it was already growing dark.

"Are you going?" she asked the old man.

"Yes, it is already time and it is quite a way to Warsaw."

"Then we shall go together."

He put away his fishing tackle in his cane, deposited the fish in a
small can and began to walk along with Janina at a swift enough
pace.

"I do not know your name," he began to say slowly, "and I'm not at
all interested in that, but I see that you must not be very happy in
life. I am a crazy old man, as my neighbors call me, and an old
mason, as the town gossips like to add; I'm alone and, reconciled to
my fate, I am awaiting the end. Some time ago I knew a little of
what it means to suffer and love, but that is past long ago, long
ago," he whispered, gazing as it were, into a distant past, with a
faint smile of remembrance on his face. "The greatest boon that man
possesses is his ability to forget, otherwise he could not live at
all. But all this does not interest you in the least, does it? I
sometimes chatter nonsense, catch myself talking to myself, and
often forget things, for I'm just an old man, you see. You have an
honest-looking face, so I will give you this bit of advice; whenever
you suffer, when everything disappoints you and life becomes
unbearable flee from the city, go into the open country, breathe in
the fresh air, bathe in the sunlight, gaze at the sky, think about
eternity and pray . . . and you will forget all your troubles. You
will feel better and stronger. The misery of the people of to-day
arises from their estrangement from nature and from God, from
loneliness of the soul. And I will tell you one more thing; forgive
everything and be merciful to all. People are bad only through their
ignorance, therefore you be good. The greatest wisdom is in the
greatest kindness. I am here every day while it is warm. Perhaps we
shall meet again sometime. Good-bye, and may you be happy." He
nodded his head kindly in farewell.

She gazed a long time after him until he vanished from her sight
near the church of St. Mary. Janina rubbed her eyes, for it seemed
to her that this meeting had been merely a hallucination.

"No, that cannot be," she whispered to herself, for she still felt
upon her face the pure gaze of his peaceful old eyes and heard his
voice saying: "Be good! Pray! Forgive!" She repeated the words to
herself as she walked along the street.

"Forgive!" and she saw her father and afterwards the theater,
Cabinski, Majkowska, Kotlicki, Mme. Anna, and Sowinska and
remembered those days of suffering, abuse, and insult.

"Be good!" and she saw again Mirowska, who bore the most painful
wrongs with a smile, who never did anyone any harm, and yet was the
laughing stock of the entire company. Then, there was Wolska, who at
the expense of her own life saved her child from death and who was
cheated and forced into poverty. There was Cabinska's nurse
sacrificing herself for a stranger's children. There was, too, the
old stage-director, slighted by everybody; there were the peasants
in the country, treated like animals, and the exploited workmen in
the cities. There were all the swindles, cheatings, and crimes which
were going on continually. Janina felt that something within her was
trembling, breaking, and crying out in protest; that the suffering
of all humanity was pouring into her soul; that all the injustice,
all the wrongs, all the suffering and tears stood before her, and a
grave voice from above was saying: "Be good, forgive, pray," while
round about her a jeering laughter arose, as though in response to
it.

She arrived at her home and for a long time could not calm herself.
She pressed her hands to her head as though trying to still those
tumultuous thoughts that were whirling through her brain in such
confusion that she could not distinguish truth from falsehood. For
in a moment of clairvoyant vision she had seen that both the good
and the bad suffered equally, that all were struggling, all were
clamoring for salvation and protesting against life.

"I shall go mad! I shall go mad!" Janina whispered to herself.

On the next morning Wladek came to see her. He seemed to be so good
and kissed her hand so tenderly that she could not help noticing his
devotion. He complained about Cabinski and aired at length his
grievances against his mother.

Janina regarded him with a cold look, for she understood almost at
once that he wished to borrow money from her.

"Go and buy me some powder, for I must go to the theater to-day,"
she said to him.

Wladek rose eagerly to fulfill her behest.

"Close the door after you, for I am going to dress."

He closed the door with the latch to which he had his own key, and
departed.

On the street, almost at the very door Wladek spied the counselor. A
sudden idea flashed through his mind, for he smiled and cordially
approached the old man.

"Good morning, esteemed counselor."

"Good morning, how are you feeling, eh?"

"Thank you, I am entirely well, only Miss Orlowska is ill. The
directress has just asked me to see how she was getting along."

"What? Miss Janina is ill? They told me so behind the scenes, but I
did not believe it, for I thought . . ."

"Yes, she is sick. I am just now going for some medicine."

"Is she dangerously ill?"

"Oh no, but would you like to convince yourself personally?"

The counselor started violently, but then, adjusting his glasses, he
said: "Indeed, I would like to. I wished to do so many times before,
but she is so inaccessible."

"I will smooth the way for you."

"You are joking. How can that be done? Although, considering my
friendly attitude toward her . . ."

"You can see her. Here is the latchkey to her room. She will receive
you; she even told me that she would be pleased to have her friends
visit her, for she spends entire days all alone."

"But if . . ."

"Go. If she received me, she will receive you all the more readily.
I will be back in about an hour and then we can have a chat." So
saying, Wladek left hurriedly.

The counselor wiped his glasses, fidgeted about nervously, and had
not yet made up his mind whether to enter or not, when Wladek turned
back and called:

"My dear counselor! Lend me four rubles, will you? I would first
have to look for Cabinski to get the money and the medicine is
needed here right away. I have taken an unpleasant task upon myself,
but what is one going to do when companionship demands it? I will
return the money to you this evening, only please don't say anything
about this. And pardon my boldness."

The counselor willingly reached for his pocket book and, handing
Wladek ten rubles said: "I am glad I can help you. If any more is
needed, tell Miss Janina to mention only a word to me and she can
have it."

Wladek went off with the money, whistling merrily.

The counselor entered the house, quietly opened the door to Janina's
apartment, took off his hat and coat and walked into the room.

Janina was combing her hair and paid no attention to the opening of
the door, for she thought that Wladek had returned.

The counselor coughed a few times and approached her with extended
hand.

Janina sprang up hastily and threw a scarf over her naked shoulders.

"Mr. Wladyslaw has just told me that you were ill, so I thought it
would be a sin not to come to see you," said the counselor, speaking
rapidly, adjusting his glasses and smiling a colorless, banal smile.

Janina stared at him in amazement, for a moment, but when she felt
the touch of his cold, clammy hand in her own, she grew red with
anger, sprang toward the door so violently that the scarf fell to
the floor, revealing the stately lines of her shoulders, and opening
the door with an energetic gesture, cried: "Leave the room!"

"But I give you my word of honor that I hadn't even the slightest
intention of offending you. As a well-wishing friend I came here
merely to offer you my sympathy. Mr. Wladyslaw . . ."

"Is a scoundrel!"

"To that I'll agree, but you needn't get angry at me and express
your indignation in such a drastic manner; that is a trifle
too . . ."

"Please leave the room immediately!" cried Janina, trembling with
anger.

"A comedienne! A comedienne, upon my word!" whispered the counselor
to himself, hastily putting on his overcoat, for he was irritated
and offended. He hurried out, angrily slamming the door after him.

"Oh, what a scoundrel! What a scoundrel! and I belong to such a
man . . . I! They are jackals, not human beings, jackals! Wherever
one turns there is mud and filth!"

And so great grew Janina's indignation, that she cried almost aloud
through her tears: "Base wretches! wretches! wretches!"

Soon afterwards, Wladek returned bringing with him the powder, a
bottle of whisky and a package of sandwiches. He eyed Janina
curiously and looked about the room.

"The counselor was here!" she flung at him harshly.

The actor laughed cynically and exclaimed in a barroom jargon, "I
cornered him. Now we can have a little feast."

Janina was about to tell him how base he was, but suddenly there
rang in her ears those words: "Be good! Forgive!"

She restrained herself and began to laugh, but so harshly and so
long that she fell upon the bed and, tossing about on it, began to
repeat amid that dreadful, hysterical laughter: "Be good! Forgive!"

After a week's intermission there began again for Janina her former
hard life and an even harder battle, because now it had become a
struggle for mere daily bread.

She sang, as before, in the chorus, dressed as a chorus girl, peered
through the curtain at the public, whose attendance at the theater
was decreasing every day, strayed about the stage and the
dressing-rooms during the intermissions, and listened to the
whispered conversations, the music, and the quarrels. But how
different now were her thoughts and her feelings, how different now
and unlike her former self was Janina!

She no longer sought in the eyes of the public enthusiasm and love
of art, nor did she cast challenging glances at the front rows of
seats, for poverty had taught her how to estimate from the stage the
size of the audience and from it to draw deductions as to the
proportionate size of her salary. Poverty taught her to take
covertly from the storeroom the bread that was often used on the
stage and to eat it on the way home; frequently this was her entire
daily sustenance. No one admired her now, or escorted her home; nor
did she contend with anyone about art.

Kotlicki had completely vanished, the counselor was angry at Janina
and kept away from the theater, while Wladek spoke with her only at
times and visited her ever more rarely, offering as his excuse his
mother's growing weakness and the need of being with her.

Janina knew that he was lying, but she did not contradict him, for
he was entirely indifferent to her. She felt a deep contempt for
him, but could not break with him entirely because there still
lingered deep down in her consciousness a memory of the happy hours
they had spent together. She treated him coldly and did not let him
kiss her, but she could not tell him outright that he was a
scoundrel, for he was, in a way, the last link uniting her strange
soul with the world.

Janina had grown frightfully thin. Her complexion became pale and
unhealthy, and from her enlarged glassy eyes there looked forth a
dreadful and constant hunger! She walked about the theater like a
shadow, apparently quiet and calm, but with that feeling of
unceasing hunger mercilessly tearing her within and with despair in
her face.

There were whole days when she had not a bite of food, when she felt
a painful emptiness in her head and heard only one thing echoing
through her brain: "If I could only get something to eat! Something
to eat!" Aside from that one desire, everything vanished from her
mind and had no importance.

A similar poverty existed throughout the whole company. The women
shifted as best they could, but the men, particularly the more
honest ones, sold everything they possessed, even their wigs, to
save themselves.

With what terror they awaited each evening! "Are we going to play
to-night?" This whisper could be heard all over the theater: in the
dressing-rooms, behind the scenes, in the restaurant-garden where
the autumn wind frolicked, and on the deserted veranda, where the
waiters, vainly waiting for guests, repeated it. It was also
repeated by Gold, who sat huddled in his box office, shivering with
cold.

An oppressive silence reigned in the dressing-rooms. The funniest
jokes of Glas could not chase the clouds of worry from the brows of
the actors. They became careless in their make-up and none of them
learned their roles, for everybody was waiting in dread suspense for
the performance and every now and then going to the box office and
asking in a whisper: "Are we going to play to-night?"

Cabinski presented a new play every day, but he could not draw the
public. He gave The Trip Around Warsaw and The Robbers, and still
the house was empty. They played such curtain-raisers as Don Cesar
de Bazan, The Statue of the Commander, and The Fortune Teller of La
Voisin, but the theater remained as deserted as ever.

"For goodness' sake, what do you want?" the director cried to the
public from behind the curtain.

"Do you think they themselves know what they want? If there were
three hundred people present, then another three hundred would
appear, but when there are only fifty with the addition of cold and
rain, then only twenty remain," the editor explained to Cabinski,
for of all those numerous acquaintances who used to come behind the
scenes he alone remained, the rest having dispersed with the first
rains.

"The public is a herd that does not know where it is going to graze
on the following day," said Mr. Peter, with animosity.

Oh yes, they hated that public, and yet prayed to it. They cursed
it, called it "a herd" and "cattle," threatened it with their fists
and spat upon it, but only let that public appear in larger numbers,
and they fell upon their faces before it and felt a deep gratitude
toward that capricious lady, who had a different humor each day and
each day bestowed her favors upon someone else.

"The public is a harlot! a harlot!" whispered Topolski threateningly.
"To-day she is with a monarch, to-morrow with a clown!"

"You have told the truth, but it will not give you even a ruble,"
answered Wawrzecki, whose humor still survived, but had already
become sharp and bitter, for Mimi had left the company and gone to
join another one at Posen.

Several members of the company had already left, although there
still remained a whole week till the end of the season. Especially
the choruses had almost entirely dispersed, for they suffered the
most from poverty.

The rains continued to fall in the morning, the afternoon, and the
evening. The atmosphere at the theater became unbearable. There were
draughts in the dressing-rooms, and mud covered the floors, for the
roof leaked everywhere. The cold was intense.

To Janina it seemed that this theater was slowly falling apart and
burying everyone among its ruins, while that other one on Theatrical
Place stood strong and invincible.

Its ponderous walls had grown black from the rains and it appeared
even sterner and mightier than before and filled Janina with a
pious, unexplainable awe whenever she gazed at it. It sometimes
seemed to her that this vast edifice rested its columns on piles of
corpses and that it drank the blood, the lives, and the brains of
the actors in the smaller theaters and throve and grew mighty on
them.

"I shall go mad! I shall go mad!" often whispered Janina, pressing
her burning head with her hands, for dreams and hallucinations
tormented her even more than hunger.

There was still another thing which made her deathly silent, so that
she would sit for whole hours listening within herself, and thinking
of those strange, indefinable impressions and feelings which
pervaded her ever more frequently. Janina felt that something
dreadful was happening within her, that those sudden fits of
trembling and weeping which would seize her without any explainable
cause, those violently changing moods to which she gave way and
those strange sufferings were somehow unnatural and resulted from
something about which she feared to think. She had no mother, nor
anyone in whom she could confide and who would enlighten her, but
there came a moment when with womanly instinct she knew that she was
about to become a mother.

Janina wept for a long time after that discovery, but her tears were
not tears of despair, but only of tender pity, sensitiveness and
shame at the same time. She felt then that death had crouched behind
her and was standing so close that it sent a shudder of frenzy
through her entire being and cast her into an apathetic
indifference. She ceased to think and surrendered herself passively,
with the fatalism of people who have suffered long or who have been
crushed by some overwhelming misfortune, to the wave that bore her
on and did not even ask whither it was taking her.

One day, unable to endure any longer the sharp pangs of hunger,
Janina began to look around her room for something which she might
sell. She began feverishly to rummage in her trunks. She had only a
few light theatrical costumes.

Sowinska was again reminding her almost every day about her overdue
rent and that daily nagging was an unbearable torment. Janina could
not ask her to sell those costumes, for she knew that Sowinska would
unscrupulously keep the money, so she decided to sell them herself.

She wrapped one of the costumes in a piece of paper and went to the
door to wait for a buyer of old clothes, but the porter was walking
about the yard, servant girls were going to and fro, and in the
windows of the houses she saw the faces of women who had often cast
scornful glances at her. No, she could not sell here, for in a
moment the whole house would know about her poverty. She went to one
of the adjoining houses and waited a short while.

"Any old things to buy! Any old things to buy!" came the hoarse
voice of an old Jew.

Janina called him. The Jew turned his head and came to her. He was
as dirty as he was old. She went with him to the stoop of some
house.

"Do you want to sell anything?" asked the Jew, laying his bag and
stick on the stairs and bending his thin face and red eyes over the
package.

"Yes," answered Janina, unwrapping the paper.

The Jew took the costume in his dirty hands, spread it out in the
sunlight, looked over it a few times, smiled imperceptibly, put it
back in the paper, wrapped it up, picked up his bag and stick and
said, "Such fineries are not for me." He began to descend the
stairway, derisively smacking his lips.

"I will sell it cheap," Janina called after him, thinking with fear
that perhaps she might get at least a ruble or a half-ruble for it.

"If you have some old shoes or pillow-slips, I will buy them, but
such a thing is of no use to me. Who will buy it? Rubbish!"

"I will sell it cheap," she whispered.

"Well, how much do you want for it?"

"A ruble."

"May I fall down dead, if that is worth more than twenty kopecks.
What is it worth, who will buy it?" and he came back, unwrapped the
costume, and again examined it indifferently.

"The ribbons alone cost me a few rubles," said Janina, and she
became silent, deciding that she would take the twenty kopecks.

"Ribbons! What's that . . . all pieces!" chattered the Jew, glancing
over the costume hastily. "Well, I will give you thirty kopecks. Do
you want it? As I'm an honest man, I can't give you more . . . I
have a good heart, but I can't. Well, do you want it?"

This barter filled Janina with such disgust, shame, and grief, that
she felt like throwing down everything and running away.

The Jew counted out the money to her, took the costume and went
away. From the window of her room Janina saw how in the full light
of the yard he examined the dress once more.

"What shall I do with this?" she whispered helplessly, pressing in
her hand the dirty and sticky kopecks.

Janina owed money to Mme. Anna for the rent of her room, to the
tender of the theater-buffet, and to a few of her companions of the
chorus, but she no longer thought of this, only took the thirty
kopecks and went out to the store to buy herself something to eat.

She returned home, and having eaten, she wished to take a little
nap, but Sowinska entered and told her that someone was waiting for
her for the last half-hour and immediately there entered
Niedzielska's servant girl with eyes all red from crying.

"Please Miss, come along with me, for my mistress is very sick and
wants to see you without fail," she said.

"Is Madame Niedzielska so seriously ill?" cried Janina, springing up
from the bed and hurriedly putting on her hat.

"The priest has already been there this afternoon with the sacrament
and she has only a few hours to live," whispered the faithful old
servant with tears in her eyes. "She can scarcely draw her breath
and all I understood her to say was that I should run to you and
tell you that she wants to see you right away. And where is Mr.
Wladyslaw?"

"How can I know? He ought to be with his mother," answered Janina.

"He ought to, but he is a worthless son," whispered the servant in
hollow tones. "Already for a week he has not been at home, for he
had an awful quarrel with his mother. My God! My God! how he swore
at her and abused her and even wanted to strike her. O merciful
Lord, that is the way he repaid her for loving him so dearly that
she even denied herself food to supply him with money. She was such
a miser that she did not want to spend money for a doctor or any
medicines and he . . . oh! oh, God will punish him severely for his
mother's tears! I know that you are not to blame for it, miss . . .
I can guess that . . . but . . ." she whispered quietly, hobbling
alongside of Janina and every now and then wiping her eyes, all red
from crying and loss of sleep.

Janina hardly heard a word of what she was saying for the noise and
the din in the street and the splashing of water flowing from the
drainpipes to the sidewalk drowned out everything else. She went
along only because the dying woman had summoned her.

The first room of Niedzielska's home was almost filled with people
and Janina greeted them as she passed through it, but no one
answered her and all eyes followed her with a peculiar curiosity.

In the room where Niedzielska lay, there were also a few persons
seated about her bed. Janina went straight to the sick woman. She
was lying flat on her back, but fixed her eyes upon Janina as soon
as she had crossed the threshold.

On Janina's entrance the persons in the room stopped talking so
abruptly that the sudden silence sent a strange thrill through her.
She met Niedzielska's gaze and could not tear her eyes away from it.
She sat down alongside of the bed, greeting her in a subdued voice.

The old woman grasped her hand tightly and in a quiet voice with a
very strong accent asked: "Where is Wladek?"

Her brows knit themselves in an expression of severity and something
like hatred gleamed in the yellowish whites of her eyes.

"I don't know. How am I to know?" answered Janina almost frightened
by her question.

"You don't know, you thief! You have stolen my son and yet, you dare
tell me that you don't know!" gasped Niedzielska, striving to raise
her voice a little, but it sounded hollow and wild. Her eyes opened
ever wider and gleamed with hatred and menace, her pale lips
quivered nervously, and her thin, yellow face twitched continually.
She raised herself a bit on her bed and in a hoarse voice, as though
rallying her remaining strength cried: "You streetwalker! You thief!
You . . ." and she fell back exhausted, with a hollow groan.

Janina sprang up, as though an electric shock had passed through
her, but the old woman gripped her wrist so tightly that she fell
back again on her chair, unable to free her hand. She glanced about
desperately at everybody, in the room, but their faces were stern.
She closed her eyes for a moment to shut out the sight of the
yellowish wrinkled faces of those women who stood facing her like
specters glaring at her with their skeleton-like faces in the
shadowy twilight of the room.

"So that is she! So young and already . . ."

"A base serpent."

"I would kill her like a dog, if she tried to do the same with my
son."

"I would have her locked up and sent to the workhouse."

"In my days such women as that were put into the pillory as a
punishment. I remember well."

"Be quiet! quiet!" whispered an old man trying to pacify the women.

"And for her he ran away to the comedians, for her he squandered so
much money, for such a low-down thing as she, he beat his mother!
May you perish, you base serpent!"

Such were the voices full of hatred and scorn that hissed all about
Janina and the poisonous malignity that dripped from their words and
glances flooded her heart with an ocean of pain and shame. She
wanted to cry out: "Mercy, people! I am innocent," but her head bent
ever lower on her breast and she had an ever dimmer consciousness of
where she was and what was happening to her. Janina's soul had
already been weakened too much by misery to resist this blow. An
immense wave of fear began to shake her, for it seemed to her that
the hand of the old woman which held her so tightly and those
dreadful eyes bulging from their sockets were drawing her down into
a dark abyss and that this was death and the end of everything.

Later, Janina no longer heard anything that was being said and saw
no one but the dying woman. At moments, she still felt a desire to
spring up and run away from there but it was a mere flicker of will
that passed through her nerves without reaching her consciousness.

So many previous sufferings, and now this blow at her very heart,
benumbed her brain with a quiet madness. She grew frightfully pale
and sat as though dead, gazing at the face of the dying woman. Those
same fragments of thoughts and visions now swarmed through her brain
that had done so once before: that same vast mass of greenish waters
seemed to submerge her consciousness. She was not even aware that
they had torn her away from Niedzielska and shoved her into a corner
where she stood immovable and bereft of her senses.

Niedzielska was dying. It seemed as though she had only been waiting
for Janina before giving herself up to death, for anger and hatred
kept her alive a few hours longer. Now, there followed a general
dissolution. She lay there rigid and straight, with her hands upon
the coverlet, which they tugged at automatically, and with her sad
eyes gazing upward as though into the eternity into which she was
entering.

The consecrated candle shed a yellowish light upon her face
impearled with the sweat of her last struggle and death agony. Her
gray hair, scattered in a disheveled mass upon the pillow, formed a
sort of background upon which appeared in sharper relief her
withered head, shaking with the unconscious and frightful
convulsions of death. She breathed heavily and slowly and gasped
with effort, catching the air with her pale lips. At moments her
face would writhe and her mouth twitch with a dreadful spasm of pain
and she would raise her hands as though she wanted to tear apart her
throat to get more air. Her white and fever-coated tongue slipped
spasmodically from her mouth and so tense did her body become in the
struggle with death that the veins stood out like black whip cords
on; her temples and throat.

The silence was full of weeping and sobbing of those kneeling about
and the awful groans of the dying woman. Feverishly whispered
prayers, tear-streaming eyes, the sobbing of the servant and the
children filled the room with an atmosphere of dreadful and
overwhelming tragedy. The dark shadows at the farther end of the
room trembled as though engulfing it all. The candles diffused a
yellowish, ghastly light that seemed to steep everything in
boundless grief.

The room filled up completely with kneeling people and only she, who
lay there rigid, unconscious, and dying, reigned from the throne of
death over that bowed throng begging for mercy.

An old man with silvery gray hair made his way to the bed, knelt
down, took a prayer book from his pocket and, by the light of the
candle, began to read the Penitential Psalms. He had a clear and
melodious voice and the words of the psalms, like a murmuring
rainbow, or like flashes of lightning full of terror, tears, might,
and heavenly grace, floated above the heads of all those present:

"Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak; O Lord, heal me, for my
bones are vexed."

"Thou art my hiding place; Thou shalt preserve me from trouble . . ."

"Many sorrows shall be to the wicked, but he that trusteth in the
Lord, mercy shall compass him about."

"My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore and my kinsmen
stand afar off."

"They also that seek after my life lay snares for me; and they that
seek for my hurt speak mischievous things and imagine deceits all
day long."

The words rang out ever stronger and eddied through the air like the
breath of a mighty power that bent low all foreheads and cast them
down into the dust with tears of sorrow, penance, and supplication.
All those present repeated them after the old man and that confused,
tearful and monotonous murmur of voices awoke Janina from her
torpor. She felt that she was still alive, so she knelt down on the
threshold of the room and with fever-parched lips whispered those
sweet words long since forgotten, and drew from them a deep comfort
full of sadness and tenderness.

"Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be
whiter than snow."

"Hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down
into the pit."

"And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them that
afflict my soul, for I am thy servant."

She repeated the words fervently and large tears rolled down her
face, uniting with the tears of all the other mourners and purging
her soul of all sorrows and memory of what had passed. But after a
while those tears began to stream so freely and stifle her so that
Janina quietly arose and left the place.

On the street she met Wladek running toward the house in haste and
fear. He stopped to ask her about his mother, but she went on
without even glancing at him.

Almost all feelings were dead within Janina, save that of a deathly
weariness. She entered the lighted Church of St. Ann on the Cracow
Suburb and, seating herself in one of the pews, gazed at the
illuminated altar and the throng of kneeling worshipers. She heard
the solemn tones of the organ and a wave of song rising above it.
She saw looking at her from the walls and the altars the peaceful
and happy faces of saints, but all this did not awaken a single
emotion in her.

"Thou wilt cut off mine enemies and destroy all them that afflict my
soul. Thou wilt destroy them . . ." Janina repeated mechanically and
left the church. No, no, she could not pray she could not.

Janina slept after all this with a deep, stony sleep that was free
from dreams.

On the following day Cabinski gave her a big role that used to be
Mimi's. Janina accepted it with indifference. With the same
indifference she went to Niedzielska's funeral. She walked at the
end of the procession unnoticed by anyone and gazed indifferently at
the thousands of graves in the cemetery and at the coffin and not a
scintilla of feeling stirred in her even at the sound of the sobbing
over the grave. Something had broken within her and she had lost all
ability to feel what was going on about her.

In the evening Janina went to the theater for the performance. She
dressed as usual and sat thoughtlessly gazing at the rows of candles
pasted to the tables, at the scribbled walls and at the rows of
actresses sitting before their mirrors.

Sowinska continually hung about the dressing-room and observed her
curiously.

Her companions spoke to Janina, but she did not answer them. Every
now and then, she fell into a state of torpor in which one beholds
without seeing anything and lives without feeling, while deep
within, at the very bottom of her consciousness, there was reflected
the image of that dying woman and there swarmed and hissed those
stinging and scornful whispers of her neighbors, mixed with the
words of the Penitential Psalms.

Suddenly, a tremor ran through Janina, for a voice reached her from
the stage which sounded like Grzesikiewicz's; so she arose and went
out.

Wladek was standing on the stage, engaged in a lively conversation
with Majkowska, whose naked shoulders he was kissing.

Janina paused behind one of the scenes, for some feeling without a
name passed through her heart, like the sharp, cold edge of a
dagger, but was swiftly gone again, awakening in her a certain
knowledge.

"Mr. Niedzielski!" she called.

The actor threw back his shoulders, while across his clean-shaven
face there passed a shadow of impatience and boredom. He whispered
yet a few words into the ear of Mela, who smiled and departed, and
then, without trying to disguise his ill humor, he approached
Janina.

"Did you want anything?" he asked irascibly.

"Yes . . ."

In the despondency that filled her at that moment Janina wanted to
tell him that she was unhappy and ill. She longed to hear a warm
word of sympathy and felt an irresistible need of telling her
troubles to someone and of weeping on some friendly breast, but on
hearing the sharp tone of Wladek's voice, she suddenly remembered
how much she had suffered through him and how base he was, so she
suppressed those desires within herself.

"Are we going to play to-day?" she asked.

"We are. There are about a hundred rubles in the treasury."

"Ask them for some money for me."

"What do you think! Do you want me to make a fool of myself?
Moreover, I'm going right home."

Janina glanced at him and said in a quiet, expressionless voice:
"Take me home, for I feel so very miserable."

"I have no time, I must immediately run to my own home, for already
they are all waiting for me there."

"Oh, how base you are! How base you are!" she whispered.

Wladek recoiled a few steps, not knowing whether he should smile, or
pretend to be offended.

"Are you saying that to me, to me?" he asked. He did not dare to
swear, for that girl with her proud face and glance of a lady
imposed respect upon him and thrust back into his throat, as it
were, the brutalities that he wanted to hurl at her.

"To you!" Janina answered. "You are base! You are the basest person
in the world . . . do you hear! . . . the basest!"

"Janina!" he cried endearingly, as though he wanted to shield
himself thereby from her accusation.

"I forbid you to address me in that manner, it insults me!"

"Have you gone crazy, or what has happened to you? What sort of
farce do you call that!" he choked out in anger.

"I have found out what you are and I scorn you with my whole soul."

"Whew! So that is the kind of pathetic role you have chosen to play?
Are you preparing it for your debut at the Warsaw Theater?"

Janina answered him only with a look of scorn and walked away.

Sowinska came up to her and with a mysterious and cruel pity in her
voice whispered: "It isn't good for you to get so irritated and
also, you ought not lace yourself so tightly."

"Why?"

"It may harm you, because . . . because . . ." and she whispered the
rest into Janina's ear.

The blood rushed to Janina's face with shame at the thought that
Sowinska had recognized her condition which she was seeking to
conceal. She had no more strength left to reply to her, nor time
either, for she had to go on the stage.

They were playing The Peasant Emigration and Janina appeared in the
first act as a super.

In the men's dressing-room that evening, a storm broke out. In the
intermission before the so-called "Christmas Eve" scene of the play,
Topolski, who was acting the part of "Bartek Kozica," sent to
Cabinski a letter, or a sort of ultimatum demanding fifty rubles for
himself and Majkowska and, in case of a denial, refusing to play any
further. While waiting for Cabinski's reply, he began slowly to
remove his make-up.

Cabinski came running almost with tears in his eyes and cried: "I
will give you twenty rubles. Oh, oh! you people have no mercy on
me!"

"Give me fifty rubles and we shall continue to play; if you don't
then . . ." Here he unglued one half of his mustache and began to
take off his leggings.

"For God's sake man! there is only one hundred rubles in all in the
treasury and that is hardly enough to cover the expenses."

"Let me have fifty rubles immediately, or else you can finish the
play yourself or return the public its money," calmly said Topolski,
pulling off his other legging.

"Up till now, I had thought that you, at least, were a man! Just
think what you are doing to us all," pleaded Cabinski.

"Don't you see, Director . . . I am undressing."

The intermission was being prolonged and the public outside was
beginning to shout and stamp its feet with impatience.

"No, I should sooner have expected death than that! And you, who are
my best friend, are you going to go back on me now?" continued
Cabinski.

"My dear Director, there's no use talking any further. You can fool
everyone else, but not me."

"But I haven't the money. If I give you thirty rubles now, I will
have nothing left with which to pay the rent of the theater!" cried
Cabinski in despair, running about the dressing-room.

"I have said: if you do not give us fifty rubles, we shall go
straight home."

In the hall there began to rise a very pandemonium of shouts and
catcalls.

"All right, here is fifty rubles, take them. You are robbing your
own companions, but you don't care a rap about that, for you'll have
something with which to organize your own company. Here, take them,
but that ends all relations between us!"

"Don't worry about my company; I shall reserve the position of a
stage-hand for you."

"Sooner will you check coats in my theater, before I join yours."

"Silence, you clown!"

"I'll call the police and they'll quiet you right away!" shouted the
infuriated Cabinski.

"I'll silence you immediately, you circus performer!" cried
Topolski, who had just finished dressing, and, taking Cabinski by
the collar, he gave him a kick that sent him flying out of the
dressing-room; then he himself went out on the stage.

The performance was concluded peacefully, but a new quarrel started
around the box office. The actors and actresses stood there in a
close group so that only their heads and faces, shining with the
grease used to wash off the paint, were visible in the gaslight.
They were all shouting for money and demanding their overdue
salaries. They shook their fists threateningly at the cashier's
window, their eyes flashed lightning, and their voices were hoarse
from shouting.

Cabinski, still red and trembling from the abuse that had just met
him, quarreled with everybody and swore and wanted to pay only the
usual installments.

"Whoever isn't satisfied with what he gets, let him go to Topolski!
It's all the same to me . . ." he cried.

Janina approached the window and said: "Director, you promised to
pay me to-day."

"I haven't the money!"

"But neither have I," she begged quietly.

"I am not paying the others either, and yet, they do not importune
me as you do."

"Mr. Cabinski, I am almost dying from hunger," she answered
straightforwardly.

"Then go and earn some money. All the others know how to help
themselves. I like naive women, but only on the stage. A comedienne!
Go to Topolski, he will advance you the money."

"Oh, Topolski assuredly won't let the members of his company suffer
poverty. He will pay each what is due him and will not cheat
people!" cried Janina impulsively.

"Then you can go straight to him and don't show up here again!"
shouted Cabinski, driven to fury by the mention of Topolski.

"Listen there, Director!" began Glas, but Janina listened no longer
and, pushing her way through the crowd, left the theater.

"Go and earn it . . ." she repeated to herself.

She walked along the almost empty streets. The gas-lamps cast a
ghastly, yellowish glare like that of funeral tapers on the silent
and deserted thoroughfares and alleys. The dark-blue vault of the
sky hung over the city like a huge canopy embroidered with brightly
scintillating stars. A cool breeze swept down the streets and
chilled Janina to the marrow.

"Go and earn it!" she again repeated to herself, passing before the
Grand Theater. She had come here without being aware of it.

Janina glanced at the building and turned back. An unbearable pain
racked her head, as though there was a burning iron ring about it.
She was so utterly weak and worn-out that at moments she could
scarcely resist the desire to sit down on the curbstone and remain
there. Then again, so desperate a realization of her poverty filled
her that she was almost ready to give herself to anyone who might
ask, if she could only relieve that agonized trembling within
herself, that almost deathly weakness and exhaustion.

She dragged herself heavily along the streets, for she no longer
knew what to do, and the chill night air, the silence, and that
deathly weariness gave her a sort of painful ecstasy. Before her
eyes there hovered only phantom forms and fiery spots, so that she
knew not where she was or what was happening to her. She felt only
one thing and that was that she would no longer be able to endure
it.

"What am I going to do further?" Janina asked thoughtlessly, looking
before herself.

The silence of the sleeping city and the silence of the dark heavens
seemed to be the only answer to her question.

Janina felt as though she were falling swiftly down a steep incline
and that there, at the very bottom, lay the outstretched corpse of
Niedzielska.

"Death!" she answered herself. "Death!" and she gazed fixedly at
that dead face with the congealed tears on its cheeks, and not fear,
but an immense silence enveloped her soul.

She looked all about her as though she were seeking for the cause of
that deep silence at her side.

Then, she began thinking of her father, of the theater, and of
herself, but as though they were things which she had only seen or
read about.

"What am I going to do?" Janina asked herself aloud after she had
returned home. It was impossible for her to see or even to imagine
what the morrow would be like.

"In this condition I can't go to the theater, I can't go anywhere.
But what am I going to do?" That question smote her now and then, as
with a club.

Day began to dawn and flood the room with its drab and gray light,
but Janina still sat on the same spot, gazing blankly out of the
window, with deeply sunken eyes and whispering with lips blackened
by fever: "What am I going to do? What am I going to do?"

CHAPTER XI

The season ended. Cabinski was leaving for Plock with an entirely
new company, for Topolski had taken away his best forces and the
rest had scattered among various companies.

In the pastry shop on Nowy Swiat, Krzykiewicz, who had broken with
Ciepieszewski, was organizing a company of his own. Stanislawski was
also starting a small company on a profit-sharing basis. Topolski
was already preparing his company for its trip to Lublin.

The local garden-theaters were all closed for the season and a
deathly silence reigned over them. The stages were boarded up and
the dressing-rooms and entrances locked. The verandas were strewn
with broken chairs and rubbish. The autumn leaves fluttered from the
trees and torn scraps of programs of the last performances rustled
about sadly in the breeze. The season was over.

Nobody visited the theater any more, for the migratory birds were
preparing for their flight, only Janina from force of habit, still
would come here, gaze a moment at the deserted haunts and return
again.

Cabinska wrote her a very cordial letter, inviting her to her home.
Janina went there and found that they were already packing up for
their journey. Immense trunks and baskets stood in the middle of the
rooms, a large pile of various stage paraphernalia together with
mattresses and bedding lay on the floor the entire outfit of a
nomadic life.

In Cabinska's room, Janina no longer found either the wreaths or the
furniture, or the canopied bed; there shone only the bare walls with
the plaster broken here and there by the hasty removal of pictures
and the pulling out of hooks. A long basket stood in the middle of
the room and the nurse, perspiring from her exertion, was packing
into it Pepa's wardrobe. Cabinska, with a cigarette in her mouth,
directed the packing and continually scolded the children, who were
tumbling in great glee over the mattresses and the straw strewn
about the packages.

She greeted Janina with exaggerated cordiality and said: "There is
such a dust in here that it is unbearable. Nurse, be careful how you
pack, so that you don't crush my dresses. Let us go out on the
street," she said to Janina, putting on her coat and hat.

She pulled Janina along to her pastry shop and there, over a cup of
chocolate, began to apologize to her for the discourtesy that
Cabinski had shown her at the box office.

"Believe me, the director was so excited that he really did not know
what he was saying. And can you wonder at it? He was giving his best
efforts and even pawning his personal effects, only that the company
might lack nothing and, in the meanwhile, along comes Topolski,
creates a rumpus and breaks up his company. Even a saint would lose
patience in those circumstances and, moreover, Topolski told my
husband that you were going to join his company."

Janina answered nothing, for she was now entirely indifferent toward
the whole matter, but when Cabinska told her that on that very
afternoon they were leaving for Plock and that she should
immediately pack her things, for the expressman would call for them
directly, she answered with decision: "Thank you for your kindness,
Mrs. Directress, but I shall not go."

Cabinska could scarcely believe her ears and cried out in amazement:
"Have you already secured an engagement and where?"

"Nowhere, nor do I intend to," answered the girl.

"How is that! Are you going to abandon the stage? You who have a big
future before you!"

"I have had more than enough of acting," answered Janina with
bitterness.

"Come now, don't reproach me with it, you know it's your first year
on the stage and they wouldn't give you big roles at once,
anywhere."

"Oh, I am no longer going to try for them."

"And I had already been planning that in Plock you would live
together with us and that would not only make it easier for you, but
my daughter also could derive more benefit from it. Please think it
over and I, on my part, assure you that you will also get roles."

"No, no! I have enough of poverty and have absolutely no more
strength left to bear it any further and, moreover, I cannot, I
cannot . . ." answered Janina quietly, with tears in her eyes, for
that proposal flashed before her mind like the dawn of a better
future and awakened for a moment her old enthusiasm and dreams of
artistic triumph. But immediately she thought of her present
condition and the sufferings that she would have to endure on that
account, so she added with even greater emphasis: "No, I cannot! I
cannot!"

But she could not hold back the tears which continued to stream
quietly down her face until even Cabinska was touched and, drawing
nearer to her, whispered with sincere sympathy, "For God's sake what
is the matter with you? Tell me, perhaps I shall be able to help
you."

In reply Janina blushed faintly, warmly clasped Cabinska's hand, and
hastily left the pastry shop.

Tears were stifling her; life was stifling her.

Immediately afterward Stanislawski came to Janina and urged her to
leave with him for the small provincial towns. He was organizing a
company of from eight to nine persons in which each was to hold a
share. He offered Janina leading roles and spoke in glowing terms of
the certain success that awaited them in the provincial towns. He
enumerated all those whom he was engaging: all young people and
novices, full of energy, zeal, and talent. And he promised himself
that he would lead them along the path of true art, that his company
would be in the nature of a school for drama and that he would be a
real teacher and father, who would make of these people true artists
worthy of the theater and its traditions.

Janina refused Stanislawski briefly. She thanked him heartily for
the kindness he had shown her during the summer and took leave of
him cordially, as though forever.

When he had gone, she determined finally to end it all. She had not
yet told herself decisively: "I will die!" So far, if someone had
told her that she was contemplating suicide she would have denied it
sincerely, but already that thought and desire were lurking in the
subconscious depths of her mind.

Janina knew when the Cabinskis were leaving, so she went down to the
steamboat landing. She stood upon the bridge and watched them steam
away. She gazed at the gray waves of the Wisla splashing against the
sides of the pier and at the distant horizon veiled in autumn mists,
and such an intense sadness and grief overwhelmed her that she could
not move from the spot, or tear her eyes away from the water.

Night fell and Janina still stood there, gazing before her. The rows
of lights on the river banks sprang up from the darkness like golden
flowers and dotted the rocking, greenish surface of the water with
quivering gleams. The din and hum of the city echoed dimly behind
her, the hacks sped with noisy clatter across the bridge, the bells
of the tramcars clanged incessantly, crowds of people passed by with
laughter; sometimes the echo of a song reached Janina, or the merry
tones of a hand organ, then again, a warm breath of wind, saturated
with the raw odor of the river, fanned her feverish face. All these
sights and sounds beat against her as against a lifeless statue and
rebounded again without making any impression on her.

The water in its depths began to pass through ever stranger
transformations: it turned black, but that blackness was interwoven
with gleams of light, flames of red, streaks of violet, and rays of
yellow, like the glowing flame of pain. There, in those silent
depths, there seemed to be a better and fuller life, for the waves
murmured so joyously, broke against the piers and stone bulwarks
and, as though with frenzied laughter, united again, blended,
tumbled over one another and flowed on. Janina seemed almost to hear
their care free laughter, their calling to one another and their
voice of mighty joy.

"What are you doing here?" suddenly said a voice behind her.

Janina trembled and turned around slowly. Wolska was standing before
her and curiously and uneasily watching her.

"Oh, nothing, I was just gazing about."

"Come with me, the air here isn't healthy," said Wolska, taking
Janina by the arm, for she read in her dimmed eyes a suicidal
intent.

Janina allowed herself to be led away and only after they had gone
some distance, she asked quietly, "So you have not left with
Cabinski?"

"I couldn't. You see, my Johnnie's health is again worse. The doctor
has forbidden me to move him from bed and I believe that it would
kill him," whispered Wolska sadly. "I had to stay, for, of course, I
can't send him to the hospital. If it comes to the worst, we shall
die together, but I will not forsake him. The doctor still gives me
some hope that he will recover."

Janina gazed with a strange feeling at the face of Wolska which,
though worn and faded, beamed with a deep motherly love. She looked
like a beggar woman in her dark, stained cloak and gray dress,
frayed at the bottom; she wore a straw hat and black mended gloves
and carried a parasol which was rusty from continual use. But
through all this poverty there shone, as bright as the sun, her love
for her child. She saw and heeded nothing else, for all that did not
concern her child had no meaning for her.

Janina walked alongside of her, gazing with admiration at this
woman. She knew her story. Wolska was the daughter of a rich and
intelligent family. She fell in love with an actor, or else with the
theater itself, and went on the stage and, although later her lover
abandoned her and she suffered poverty and humiliation, she could
not tear herself away from the theater and now, she centered all her
love and all her hopes upon her child that had been seriously ill
since the spring.

"Where does she get all her strength?" thought Janina and then,
turning to Wolska, she asked: "What are you doing now?"

Wolska shuddered, a faint blush flitted over her worn face and her
lips quivered with a painful expression as she answered: "I
sing . . . What else could I do? I must live and must earn enough to
pay Johnnie's doctor bills. I must. Although it fills me with shame
to do it, I must. Alas, such is my fate, such is my fate!" she
moaned complainingly.

"But I don't know what you mean," said Janina, who could not
understand why Wolska should feel ashamed to earn a living by
singing.

"Because, you see, Miss Janina, I don't want anybody to know about
it. . . . You will keep it to yourself, won't you?" she begged with
tears in her eyes.

"Certainly I give you my word. Moreover, whom would I tell? . . . I
am all alone in the world."

"I sing in a restaurant on Podwal St.," said Wolska in a low and
hurried voice.

"In a restaurant!" whispered Janina, standing stock-still in
amazement.

"What else could I do? Tell me, what else could I do? I need money
for food and rent. How else could I earn it, when I don't even know
how to sew? At home I knew how to play on the piano a bit and could
speak a little French, but of course, that would not bring me a
penny now. I saw an advertisement in the Courier for a singer, so I
went there and got the position. They pay me a ruble a day together
with meals and . . ." but tears choked her voice and she grasped
Janina's hand and pressed it feverishly. Janina returned the
hand-clasp with a similar one and they walked on in silence.

"Come along with me, won't you? It will make me feel a little more
at ease," said Wolska.

Janina willingly agreed.

They entered the restaurant "Under the Bridge" on Podwal St. It was
a long and narrow garden with a few miserable trees. At the very
entrance there was a well. A whitewashed fence on the left side of
the garden divided it from the neighboring property which must have
been a lumberyard, for piles of beams and boards could be seen
looming above the fence. A few kerosene lanterns illuminated the
place. A number of little white tables with varnished tops and
around them three times that number of rough-hewn chairs constituted
the entire furnishings of that summer restaurant. A small office on
the ground floor and the top of the neighboring house enclosed the
right side of the garden, while at the back there arose a high,
rough brick wall with small, dirty, and barred windows; it was the
rear of the former Kochanowski Palace, standing on the corner of
Miodowa and Kapitulna Streets.

Near the fence, a small stage shaded by a canvas roof with its two
open sides facing toward the audience, formed a sort of niche, the
walls of which were covered with a cheap, blue paper dotted with
silver stars. The smoking kerosene footlights on one side of the
stage cast a drab light upon a musician with a disheveled gray beard
and grease-stained coat, who was pounding away at the keyboard of a
wretched piano with an automatic motion of his arms and head.

The garden was filled with a public of working-class people and
those from the poorer section of the city.

Janina and Wolska pushed their way through the crowd to that little
office building in which there was a dressing-room for the
performers, divided into a men's and women's compartment by a red
cretonne curtain.

"I am already waiting!" came a hoarse, drunken voice from behind the
curtain.

"You can begin your part, I will come right away!" answered Wolska,
dressing herself in feverish haste in a grotesque, red costume.

In a few minutes she was all ready for her appearance. Janina
followed her out and took a seat facing the stage. Wolska, all
flushed with hurrying and still closing the last buttons and hooks
of her costume, appeared on the stage, greeting the public with a
long bow. The musician struck the yellow keys and at the same moment
there arose the tones of a song:

Once upon a stump among the hills, Between the oaks there sat two
turtle-doves, And I know not for what sport of love's They kissed
each other with their bills.

The strains of the old, sentimental song from The Cracovians and the
Mountaineers floated on, interrupted only by frequent bursts of
applause, the banging of beer glasses against the tables, the
clatter of plates, the slamming of doors and the reports or rifles