"So that is the kind of husband and father you are! . . . that is the kind of director!" she shouted in fury.

"Hold out only one hour, and you'll go straight to heaven, you martyr!" someone called to Cabinski.

"Sir," queried a spectator, holding up one of the actors by the button of his coat. "Sir, are they playing something new?"

"First of all, that is a button from my coat which you have pulled off!" cried the actor, "and that, my dear sir, is the first act of a moving farce entitled Behind the Scenes; it is given each day with great success."

The stage became deserted. The orchestra was tuning its instruments; "Halt" went for a drink of beer, and the company scattered about the garden. Cabinski, holding his head with both hands, paced up and down the stage like a madman, complaining half in anger, half in commiseration, for his wife was still quietly continuing her spasms.

"Oh what people! What people! What scandals!"

Janina, startled by the brutality of the spectacle she had just witnessed, retreated behind the farthermost scene. She felt that it was now impossible to speak with the director.

"So these are artists! . . . this is the theater!" she was thinking.

The rehearsal, after a short intermission, began anew with Kaczkowska as the titular heroine.

Majkowska was in a splendid humor, being so successfully rid of her rival.

The director, after his wife's departure, rubbed his hands in glee and motioned to Topolski. They went out to the buffet for a drink. Without a doubt he must have made something on his break with Nicolette.

Stanislawski, the oldest member of the company, walked up and down the dressing-room, spitting with disgust and muttering to Mirowska, who was sitting on a chair with her feet curled up under her.

"Scandals . . . nothing but scandals! . . . how can we expect to have any success! . . ."

Mirowska nodded her assent, smiling faintly and keeping steadily on with the crocheting of a handkerchief.

After the rehearsal Janina boldly approached Cabinski.

"Mr. Director—" she began.

"Ah, it is you, miss? . . . I will accept you. Come to-morrow before the performance, and we will talk it over. I have not the time now."

"Thank you ever so much, sir!" she answered overjoyed.

"Have you any kind of a voice?"

"A voice?"

"Do you sing?"

"At home I used to sing a little . . . but I do not think I have a stage voice . . . however, I . . ."

"Only come a little earlier and we shall try you out. . . . I shall speak to the musical director."



CHAPTER III

The Lazienki Park in Warsaw was athrob with the breath of spring. The roses bloomed and the jasmines diffused their heavy odor through the park. It was so quiet and lovely there, that Janina sat for a few hours near the lake, forgetting everything.

The swans with spreading wings, like white cloudlets, floated over the azure bosom of the water; the marble statues glowed with immaculate whiteness; the fresh and luxuriant foliage was like a vast sea of emerald steeped in golden sunlight; the red blossoms of the chestnut trees floated down on the ground, the waters and the lawns, and flickered like rosy sparks among the shadows of the trees.

The noisy hum of the city reached here in a subdued echo and lost itself among the bushes.

Janina had come here straight from the theater. What she had seen disquieted her; she felt within herself a dull pain of disillusionment and hesitation.

She did not wish to remember anything, but only kept repeating to herself, "I'm in the theater! . . . I'm in the theater!"

There passed before her mind the figures of her future companions. Instinctively she felt that in those faces there was nothing friendly, only, envy and hypocrisy.

Presently she proceeded to her hotel at which she had stopped on the advice of her fellow-travelers, on the train to Warsaw. It was a cheap affair on the outskirts of the city and frequented chiefly by petty farm officials and the actors of small provincial theaters.

She was given a small room on the third floor, with a window looking out upon the red roofs of the old city, extending in crooked and irregular lines. It was such an ugly view that, on returning from Lazienki, with her eyes and soul still full of the green of the verdure and the golden sunlight, she immediately pulled down the shades and began to unpack her trunk.

She had not yet had time to think of her father. The city, the hubbub and bustle which engulfed her immediately upon her arrival at the station, the weariness caused by the journey and by the last moments at Bukowiec, and afterwards those feverish hours at the theater, the rehearsal, the park, the waiting for evening and her own coming rehearsal all this had so completely absorbed her that she forgot almost entirely about home.

She dressed carefully, for she wished to appear at her best.

When she arrived at the garden-theater the lights were already turned on and the public was beginning to assemble. She went boldly behind the scenes. The stage hands were arranging the decorations; of the company, no one was as yet present.

In the dressing-rooms the gaslights flared brightly. The costumer was preparing gaudy costumes, and the make-up man sat whistling and combing a wig with long, bright tresses.

In the ladies' dressing-room an old woman was standing under the gaslight, sewing something.

Janina explored all the corners, examining everything, emboldened by the fact that no one paid the slightest attention to her. The walls behind the huge canvas decorations were dirty, with their plaster broken off, and covered with sticky dampness. The floors, the moldings, the shabby furniture and decorations, that seemed to her like beggarly rags, were thick with dust and filth. The odor of mastic, cosmetics, and burnt hair, floating over the stage, nauseated her.

She viewed the canvas scenes of what were supposed to be magnificent castles, the chambers of the kings of operetta, gorgeous landscapes and beheld at close view a cheap smear of colors which could satisfy only the grossest of senses and then only from a distance. In the storeroom she saw cardboard crowns; the satin robes were poor imitations, the velvets were cheap taffeta, the ermines were painted cambric, the gold was gilded paper, the armor was of cardboard, the swords and daggers of wood.

She gazed at that future kingdom of hers as though wishing to convince herself of its worthiness. And, though it was sham, tinsel, lies, and comedy she tried to see above it all something infinitely higher—art.

The stage was not yet set, and was only dimly lighted. Janina crossed it a few times with the stately stride of a heroine, then again, with the light, graceful airiness of an ingenue, or with the quick feverish step of a woman who carries with her death and destruction; and with each new impersonation, her face assumed the appropriate expression, her eyes glowed with the flame of the Eumenides, with storm, desire, conflict, or, kindling with the mood of love, longing, anxiety they shone like stars on a spring night.

She passed through these various transformations unconsciously, impelled by the memory of the plays and roles she had read, and so great was her abstraction, that she forgot about everything and paid no attention to the stagehands, who were moving about her.

"My Al used to act the same way . . . the same way!" said a quiet voice from behind the scenes near the ladies' dressing-room.

Janina paused in confusion. She saw standing there a middle-aged woman of medium height, with a withered face and stern demeanor.

"You have joined our company, miss?" she inquired with a sharp energetic voice, piercing Janina with her round, owl-like eyes.

"Not quite. . . . I am about to have a trial with the musical director. Ah, yes, Mr. Cabinski even said that it was to take place before the performance! . . ." she cried, recalling what he had told her.

"Aha! with that drunkard . . ."

Janina glanced at her, surprised.

"Have you set your heart on being with us, miss?"

"In the theater? . . . yes! . . . I journeyed here for that very purpose."

"From whence?" asked the elderly woman abruptly.

"From home," answered Janina, but more quietly and with a certain hesitation.

"Ah . . . I see . . . you are entirely new to the profession! . . . Well, well! that is curious! . . ."

"Why? . . . why should it be so strange for one who loves the theater to try to join it? . . ."

"Oh, that's what all of them say! . . . while in truth, each of them runs away either from something . . . or for something. . . ."

Janina was conscious of an accent of hidden malice in her voice. "Do you know, madam, how soon the musical director will arrive?" she asked.

"I don't!" snapped back the elderly woman, and walked away.

Janina moved back a little, for just then the workmen were spreading a huge waxed canvas over the stage. She was gazing at this absent-mindedly, when the elderly woman reappeared and addressed her in a milder tone, "I will give you a piece of advice, miss. . . . It is necessary for you to win over the musical director."

"But how am I to do it?"

"Have you money?"

"I have, but—"

"If you will listen to me, I will advise you."

"Certainly."

"You must get him a little drunk, then the rehearsal will come off splendidly."

Janina glanced at her in amazement.

"Ha! ha!" laughed the other quietly. "Ha! ha! she is a real moon-calf!"

After a moment she whispered, "Let us go to the dressing-room. I will enlighten you a little . . ."

She pulled Janina after her, and afterwards, busying herself with pinning a dress on a mannikin, she remarked, "We must get acquainted."

"Tell me, madam, how about that musical director?" asked Janina.

"It's necessary to buy him some cognac. Yes!" she added after a moment, "Cognac, beer, and sandwiches will, perhaps, be sufficient."

"How much would that cost?"

"I think that for three rubles you can give him a decent treat. Let me have the money and I will order everything for you. I had better go right away."

Janina gave her the money.

Sowinska left and in about a quarter of an hour returned, breathless.

"Well, everything is settled! Come along, miss, the director is waiting."

Behind the restaurant hall there was a room with a piano. "Halt," flushed and sleepy, was already waiting there.

"Cabinski spoke to me about you, miss!" he began. "What can you sing? . . . Whew! how warm I feel! . . . Perhaps you will raise the window?" he said, turning to Sowinska.

Janina felt disturbed by his hoarse voice and his inflamed, drunken face, but she sat down to the piano, wondering what she should select to sing.

"Ah! you also play, miss? . . ." he queried in great surprise.

"Yes," she answered, and began playing the introduction to some song, without seeing the signs that Sowinska was making to her.

"Please sing something for me," he said, "I want to hear only your voice. . . . Or perhaps you could sing some solo part?"

"Mr. Director . . . I feel that I have a calling for the drama, or even for the comedy, but never for the opera."

"But we are not talking about the opera . . ."

"About what, then?"

"About this . . . the operetta!" he cried, striking his knee. "Sing, Miss! . . . I have only a little time and I am burning up with this heat."

She began to sing a song of Tosti's. The director listened, but at the same time gazed at Sowinska and pointed to his parched lips.

When Janina had ended, he cried, "Very well . . . we will accept you . . . I must hurry out, for I'm roasting."

"Perhaps you will have a drink of something with us, Mr. Director? . . ." she queried timidly, understanding the signs that Sowinska gave her.

He pretended to excuse himself, but in the end remained.

Sowinska ordered the waiter to bring half a bottle of cognac, three beers and some sandwiches, and, having drained her own glass, she hastily left them, saying that she had forgotten something in the dressing-room.

"Halt" shoved his chair nearer to Janina's.

"Hm! . . . you have a voice, miss . . . a very nice voice . . ." he said and laid his big red paw upon her knee, while with the other he began to pour some brandy into his beer.

She moved back a little, disgusted.

"You can put on a bold front on the stage. . . . I will help you . . ." he added, draining his glass at one gulp.

"If you will be so kind, Mr. Director . . ." Janina said, drawing away from him.

"I will see to it . . . I will take care of you!"

And suddenly he took her about the waist and drew her to him.

Janina shoved him back with such force that he fell sprawling upon the table, and then ran to the door, ready to cry out.

"Whew! . . . wait a minute . . . you're a fool! . . . stay! . . . I wanted to take care of you, help you, but since you're such a blooming fool, go and hang yourself! . . ."

He drank the rest of his cognac and left.

On the veranda sat Cabinski with the stage-manager.

"Has she any kind of a voice?" he inquired of "Halt," for he had seen Janina entering the room. "A soprano?"

"Ho, ho! something unheard of . . . almost an alto!"

Janina sat for about an hour in that room, unable to control the indignation and rage that shook her. There were lucid moments when she would spring up as though ready to rush out and away from those people, but immediately she would sink down again with a moan.

"Where will I go?" she asked herself, and then added with a sudden determination. "No, I will stay! . . . I will bear all, if it is necessary . . . I must! . . . I must!"

Janina became set in her stubborn determination. She collected within herself all her powers for impending battle with misfortune, with obstacles, with the whole evil and hostile world and for a moment, she saw herself on some dizzying height where was fame and the intoxication of triumph.

Presently Sowinska came in.

"Thank you, for your advice . . . and for leaving me with a pig! . . ." the girl exclaimed, half weeping.

"I was in a hurry . . . he did not eat you, did he? . . . He's a good man. . . ."

"Then leave your daughter alone with that good man!" retorted Janina harshly. "My daughter is not an actress," answered Sowinska.

"Oh! . . . It doesn't matter . . . It's only a lesson for me," she whispered, turning away.

She met Cabinski and, approaching him, asked, "Will you accept me, Mr. Director?"

"You may consider yourself engaged," he answered. "As for your salary we shall speak of that another day."

"What am I to play? . . . I should like to take the part of Clara in The Iron Master."

Cabinski glanced at her sharply and covered his mouth with his hand so as not to burst out laughing.

"Just a moment . . . just a moment . . . you must first acquaint yourself with the stage. In the meanwhile, you will appear with the chorus. Halt told me that you know how to play the piano and read notes. To-morrow I will give you some scores of the operettas we play and you can learn the chorus parts."

Janina went to the dressing-room and had scarcely opened the door, when someone pushed her back, slammed the door in her face and called out angrily: "Upstairs with you! that is where the chorus girls belong!"

She set her teeth and went upstairs.

The dressing-room of the chorus was a long, narrow and low apartment. Rows of unshaded gaslights burned above long bare, board tables extending along the walls on three sides of the room. The walls were covered with unbeveled and unpainted boards which were scribbled all over with names, dates jokes and caricatures, done in charcoal or rouge paint. On the bare wall hung a whole string of dresses and costumes.

About twenty women sat undressed before mirrors of various shapes, and before each one there burned candles.

Janina spying an unoccupied chair, near the door, sat down and began to look about her.

"I beg your pardon, but that is my seat!" called a stout brunette.

Janina stood aside.

"Did you come to see someone? . . ." asked the same chorus-girl, rubbing her face with vaseline before applying powder.

"No. I came to the dressing-room. I am one of the company," answered Janina rather loudly.

"Oh, you are?"

A few heads raised themselves above the tables and a few pairs of eyes were centered upon Janina.

Janina told the brunette her name.

"Girls! . . . this new one calls herself Orlowska. Get acquainted with her!" called the brunette.

A few of those sitting nearest her stretched out their hands in greeting and then proceeded with their make-up.

"Louise, loan me some powder."

"Go buy it!"

"Say Sowinska!" called down one of the girls through the open door to the lower dressing-room, "I met that same guy . . . you know! . . . I was walking along Nowy Swiat."

"Tell it to the marines! Who would fall for such a scarecrow as you!" put in another.

"I've bought a new suit . . . look!" cried a small, very pretty blonde.

"You mean he bought it for you!"

"Goodness, no! . . . I bought it from my own savings."

"Persian lamb! . . . oh! . . . Do you think we'll believe you? . . . Come now, you bought it out of that fellow's savings, didn't you?"

"It's pure lily! . . . The waist is low-cut with a yoke of cream-colored embroidery, the skirt is plain with a shirred hem, the hat is trimmed with violets," another girl was recounting, as she slipped her ballet skirts over her head.

"Listen there, you lily-colored kid . . . give me back that ruble that you owe me . . . ."

"After the play when I get it I'll give it back to you, honest!"

"Ha! ha! Cabinski will give it to you, like fun . . ."

"I tell you, my dear, I'm getting desperate. . . . He coughed a little . . . but I thought nothing of it . . . until yesterday, when I looked down his little throat I saw . . . white spots . . . I ran for the doctor . . . he examined him and said: diphtheria! I sat by him all night, rubbed his throat every hour . . . he couldn't say a word, only showed me with his little finger how it hurt . . . and the tears streamed down his face so pitifully that I thought I'd die of grief . . . I left the janitress with him, for I must make some money . . . I left my cloak to cover him with . . . but all, all that is not enough! . . ." a slim and pretty actress with a face worn by suffering and poverty was telling her neighbor in a subdued voice, while she curled her hair, carmined her pale lips, and with the pencil gave a defiant touch to her eyes dimmed by tears and sleepiness.

"Helen! your mother asked about you to-day . . ."

"Surely, not about me . . . my mother died long ago."

"Don't tell me that! Majkowska knows you and your mother well and saw you together on Marshalkowska Street the other day."

"Majkowska ought to buy herself a pair of glasses, if she's so blind as that . . . I was going downtown with the housekeeper."

The other girls began to laugh at her. The one who had denied her mother blew out her candle and left in irritation.

"She's ashamed of her own mother. That's true, but such a mother! . . ."

"A plain peasant woman. She compromises her before everybody. . . . At least, she could refrain from making a show before other people!"

"How so? Can a girl be ashamed of her mother? . . ." cried Janina, who had been sitting in silence, until those last words stirred her to indignation.

"You are a newcomer, so you don't know anything," several answered her at once.

"May I come in? . . ." called a masculine voice from without.

"You can't! you can't!" chorused the girls energetically.

"Zielinska! your editor has come."

A tall, stout chorus girl, rustling her skirts, passed out of the room.

"Shepska! take a look out after them."

Shepska went out, but came back immediately.

"They've gone downstairs."

The stage bell rang violently.

"To the stage!" called the stage-director at the door. "We begin immediately!"

There arose an indescribable hubbub. All the girls began to talk and shout at the same time; they ran about, tore away hairpins and curling irons from one another, powdered themselves, quarreled over trifles, blew out candles, hastily closed their dressing-cases and rushed down the stairs in crowds, for the second bell had already sounded.

Janina descended last of all and stood behind the scenes. The performance began. They were playing some kind of half fairy-like operetta. Janina could hardly recognize those people or that theater everything had undergone such a magical transformation and taken on a new beauty under the influence of powder, paint, and light! . . .

The music, with the quiet caressing tones of the flute, floated through the silence and stole into Janina's soul, lulling it sweetly . . . and later, a dance of some kind, soft, voluptuous, and intoxicating, enveloped her with its charm, lured and rocked her on the waves of rhythm and held her in an ecstatic lethargy.

She felt herself drawn ever farther into a confused whirl of lights, tones and colors. Her impulsive and sensuous nature, struggling hitherto with the drab commonplace of everyday events and people, was fascinated. It was almost as she had visioned it in her soul; full of lights, music, thrilling accents, ecstatic swoons, strong colors, and stormy and overpowering emotions, breaking with the force of thunderbolts.

The suffocating odor of powder dust floated about her like a cloud, while from the crowded hall there flowed a stream of hot breaths and desiring glances that broke against the stage like a magnetic wave, drowning in forgetfulness all that was not song, music, and pleasure.

When the act ended and a storm of applause broke loose, she was on the verge of fainting. She bent her head and eagerly drank in those murmurs resembling lightning flashes and, like them blinding the soul. She breathed in those cries of the delighted public with her full breath and with all the might of her soul that craved for fame. She closed her eyes, so that that impression, that picture might last longer.

The enchanting vision had dissolved. Over the stage moved men in their shirt sleeves and without vests; they were changing the scenes, arranging the furniture, fastening the props. She saw the grimy necks, the dirty and ugly faces, the coarse and hardened hands and the heavy forms.

She went out on the stage and through a slit in the curtain gazed out on the dim hall packed full of people. She saw hundreds of young faces, women's faces, smiling and still stirred by the music, while their owners fanned themselves; the men in their black evening clothes formed dark spots scattered at regular intervals, upon the light background of feminine toilettes.

Janina felt a strange disappointment as she realized that the faces of the public were very much like those of Grzesikiewicz, her father, her home acquaintances, the principal of her boarding school, the professors at the academy and the telegrapher at Bukowiec. For the moment, it seemed to her that that was a sheer impossibility. How so? . . . She, of course, knew what to think about those others, whom long ago she had classified as fools, light-heads, drunkards, gossipers, silly geese and house-hens; small and shallow souls, a band of common eaters-of-bread, sunk in the shallow morass of material existence. And these people that filled the theater and doled out applause, and whom she had once thought of as demi-gods were they the same as those others? Janina asked herself, that, wonderingly.

"Madame!" said a voice beside her.

She tore her face away from the curtain. At her side stood a handsome, elegantly dressed young man who was holding his hand to his hat, smiling in a conventional manner.

"Just let me look a moment . . ." he said.

Janina moved away a bit.

He glanced through the slit in the curtain and relinquished her place to her.

"Pardon me, pardon me for disturbing you . . ." he said.

"Oh, I've looked all I wanted to, sir . . ." she answered.

"Not a very interesting sight, is it? . . ." he queried. "The most authentic Philistia; trade-mongers and shoemakers. . . . Perhaps you think, madame, that they come to hear, and admire the play? Oh, no! . . . they come here to display their new clothes, have supper, and kill time. . . ."

"Well then, who does come for the play itself?" she asked.

"In this place, no one. . . . At the Grand Theater and at the Varieties . . . there, perhaps, you may yet find a group, a very small group who love art and who come for the sake of art alone. I have often touched upon that matter in the papers."

"Mr. Editor, let me have a cigarette!" called an actor from behind the scenes.

"At your service." He handed the actor a silver cigarette-case.

Janina, moving away, gazed with admiration at the writer, delighted with the opportunity of observing such a man at close range.

How many times in the country while listening to the everlasting conversations about farming, politics, rainy and clear weather, she had dreamed of this other world, of people who would discourse to her of ideals, art, humanity, progress and poetry, and who impersonated in themselves all those ideals.

"You must not be very long in this company for I have not had the pleasure of seeing you before . . ."

"I was engaged only to-day."

"Have you appeared elsewhere before?"

"No, never on the real stage. . . . I took part only in amateur theatricals."

"That is the way nearly all dramatic talent develops. I know . . . I happen to know . . . Modrzejewska herself often mentioned that fact to me," he remarked, with a condescending smile.

"Mr. Editor . . . do your duty!" called Kaczkowska, extending her hands.

The editor buttoned her gloves, kissed each of her hands a few times, received a slap on the shoulder in reward and retreated to the curtain where Janina was standing.

"So this is your first appearance in the theater? . . ." he asked. "No doubt it's a case of the family opposing . . . inflexible determination on your part . . . the isolation and dullness of the countryside . . . your first appearance as an amateur . . . stage fright . . . success . . . the recognition of the divine spark within yourself . . . your dreams of the real stage . . . tears . . . sleepless nights . . . a struggle with an adverse environment . . . finally, consent . . . or perhaps a secret escape in the night . . . fear . . . anxiety . . . going the rounds of the directors . . . seeking an engagement . . . ecstasy . . . art . . . godliness!" he spoke rapidly, telegraphically.

"You have almost guessed it, Mr. Editor . . . it was the same with me," said Janina.

"You see, mademoiselle, I knew so from the first. It's intuition that's all! I'll take care of you, upon my word! . . . I'll insert a little item about you in our next issue. Later, give a few details under a sensational headline, next, a longer article about the new star on the horizon of dramatic art," he sped on. . . . "You will sweep them off their feet . . . the directors will tear you away from each other, and in about a year or two . . . you will be in the Grand Theater at Warsaw! . . ."

"But, Mr. Editor, no one knows me; no one, as yet, knows whether I have talent . . ."

"You have talent, my word! My intuition tells me that. . . . Do not believe the testimony of the senses, mademoiselle, hold yourself aloof from all reasoning, throw to the dogs all calculations, but do not fail to believe intuition! . . ."

"Come here, editor . . . hurry!" called someone to him.

"Au revoir! au revoir!" he said, throwing a kiss to Janina and touching the brim of his hat as he disappeared.

Janina arose from her seat, but that same intuition which he had advised her to heed, told her not to take his words seriously. He seemed to her a light-headed individual given to hasty judgments. That promise of notices and articles in the papers and his extravagant praises of her talent seemed to her merely insincere twaddle. Even his face, gestures, and manner of speaking reminded her of a certain notorious braggart living in the vicinity of Bukowiec.

The second act of the play commenced.

Janina looked on, but it did not carry her away as the first had done.

"How do you like our theater? . . ." asked the brunette chorus girl, whom she had met in the dressing-room.

"Very well!" answered Janina.

"Bah! the theater is like a plague; when it infects anyone, you might as well say amen! . . ." whispered the brunette, her voice hard.

Behind the scenes, in the almost dark passages between the decorations there was a great number of people. The actors stood in the passages and certain pairs were crouched in the darkness; whispers and discreet laughs sounded on all sides.

The stage-director, an old, bald man without a collar and dressed only in a vest, with a scenario in one hand and a bell in the other, ran up and down at the back.

"To the stage! You enter immediately, madame! . . . enter!" he cried all perspired and flushed, and ran on again, gathered from the dressing-rooms those who were needed on the stage, and at the appropriate moment whispered: "Enter!"

Janina saw how the actors suddenly interrupted their conversations, left each other in the midst of some sentence, stood down half-empty glasses, and rushed for the entrances, waiting for their turn, immovable and silent or nervously whispering the words of their roles, and entering into their characters; she saw the quivering of lips and eyelids, the trembling of legs, the sudden paleness beneath the layer of paint, and the feverish glances of stage fright . . .

"Enter!" sounded a voice like the crack of a whip.

Almost everyone started violently, hastily assumed the required facial expression, crossed himself a few times and went on.

Each time the stage door opened a thrill went through Janina at that wave of strange fire, that streamed toward her from the public.

She began again to lose herself in the play. That mysterious gloom, those garish hues and forms, emerging from the shadows and suddenly flooded with light, the strains of invisible music, the echo of singing, the sound of subdued footfalls and strange whispers in the darkness, the feverish rapture of the public, the glowing eyes, the excitement, the thundering applause, like a far-away storm, streams of dazzling light alternating with darkness, the throng of people, the pathetic ring of words, tragic cries, heart-rending sobs, moans, weeping, a whole melodrama, pompously and noisily acted all this filled Janina with a fervor different from the one she had felt in the first act, the fervor of energy and action. She went through the playing with all the actors, suffered together with those paper heroes and heroines, feared with them and loved with them; she felt their nervousness before entering the stage, trembled with emotion in the pathetic moments of the play, while certain words and cries sent so strange and painful a tremor through her that they brought the tears to her eyes and a faint cry to her lips.

An increasing number of people from the audience began to come behind the scenes. Boxes of candy, bouquets, and single flowers circulated freely from hand to hand. Beer, whisky, and cognac were drunk and cakes were snatched from a huge tray. Gusts of laughter broke out here and there, jokes exploded like fireworks in the air. Some of the chorus girls had dressed and were going out into the garden.

Janina saw actors in their negligee only, parading up and down before their dressing-rooms; women, in white petticoats with naked shoulders and with half of their stage make-up removed, were strolling about the stage and peeping through the curtain at the public. On noticing some stranger, they would retreat uttering little shrieks, smiling coquettishly, and darting significant glances.

Waiters from the restaurant, maids, and stage hands went flying about like hunting hounds.

"Sowinska!"

"Tailor!"

"Costumer!"

"A pair of pants and a cape!"

"A cane for the stage and a letter!"

"Wicek! run to the director and tell him that it is time for him to dress for the last act!"

"Set the stage!"

"Wicek! send me some rouge, beer, and sandwiches! . . ." called one actress across the stage.

In the dressing-rooms reigned chaos, forced and hurried changing of dress, feverish make-up with cosmetics that were almost melting from the heat, and quarrels . . . .

"If you pass before me again on the stage, sir, I'll kick your shins, as I live!"

"Go kick your dog! My part calls for that . . . here, read it!"

"You intentionally hide me from view!"

"What did I tell you!" said another. "I merely popped out and immediately there arose a murmur of applause."

"It was only the wind and that fellow thinks it was applause," answered another voice.

"There was a murmur of disgust, because you bungled your part."

"How the deuce can one keep from bungling when Dobek prompts like a consumptive nag?"

"Speak yourself, and I will then stop . . . we'll see what a fool you'll make of yourself! . . . I put word after word into his ear as with a shovel and . . . nothing doing! . . . I shout out so loudly that Halt kicks at the stage for silence . . . but that fellow still stands there like a dummy!" retorted Dobek.

"I always know my part; you trip me up intentionally."

"Tailor! a belt, a sword and a hat . . . hurry!"

"Mary! if you tell me to go, there will go with me night and suffering, loneliness and tears . . . Mary! do you not hear me? I . . . It is the voice of the heart that loves you . . . the voice . . ." repeated Wladek, pacing up and down the dressing-room with his role and gesticulating wildly, deaf to all that was going on about him.

"Hey there, Wladek . . . put on the soft pedal. . . . You'll have enough opportunity to roar and groan on the stage until our ears are sore," called someone.

"Gentlemen! haven't you perhaps seen Peter?" inquired an actress, poking her head through the door.

"Gentlemen, see if Peter isn't sitting somewhere under the table," mocked someone.

"Milady . . . Peter went upstairs with a very pretty little dame."

"Murder him, madame! he's unfaithful!"

Such were the remarks, punctuated with laughter, that greeted her.

The actress vanished and from the other side of the stage one could hear her asking everyone, "Have you seen Peter?"

"She will go crazy some day from jealousy over him! . . ." remarked someone.

"A respectable woman!"

"But that doesn't prevent her from being a fool."

"How are you, Editor!"

"Oh, it's the editor, is it! . . . that means we'll have beer and cigarettes."

"And here comes the counselor! . . ."

"Good evening Counselor!"

"What news at the box office?"

"Fine! . . . The theater is sold out, for I saw Gold smoking a cigar."

"Praised be the gods! The advances on our salaries will be larger."

"How do you do, Bolek! . . . Don't come in here, or you will melt like butter . . . we have a little Africa here to-day . . ."

"We'll cool ourselves immediately, for I've ordered the beer . . ."

"To the stage, everybody! . . . The people to the stage! The priests to the stage! The soldiers to the stage!" shouted the stage-director, rushing from one dressing-room to the other.

After a moment, all had vanished.

It was well after ten o'clock, the next morning at her hotel when Janina awoke, worn-out completely; for the moment, she could not understand, where she was.

She no longer felt any of yesterday's feverish raptures, but rather a quiet gladness that she was already in the theater. At moments, the bright tone of her mood was overcast by some shadow, some presentiment, or unconscious memory from the past; it was the glimmering of something unpleasant which, although it quickly vanished, left traces of uneasiness.

She hastily drank her tea and was about to go out, when someone gently rapped at the door.

"Come in!" she called.

There entered an old Jewish woman, neatly dressed, with a big box under her arm.

"Good morning, miss!"

"Good morning," she answered, surprised by the visit.

"Perhaps you will buy something, miss? . . . I have good, cheap wares. Perhaps you need some jewelry? Perhaps some gloves or hairpins, they are pure silver. I have all kinds of articles at different prices and all are genuine Parisian goods! . . ." she chattered on rapidly, spreading the contents of her box on the table, while her little black eyes with heavy red lids, like the eyes of a hawk, wandered about the room and took stock of everything.

Janina kept silent.

"It won't harm you to look at them . . ." insisted the Jewess. "I have cheap things and pretty things! Perhaps you will have some ribbons, or laces, or stockings? . . . or will you have some of these silk handkerchiefs? . . ."

Janina began to examine the collection spread out on the table and selected a few yards of some ribbon.

"Perhaps your mother will also buy something? . . ." ventured the Jewess, looking at her intently.

"I am alone."

"Alone?" she drawled, with an inquisitive contraction of her eyebrows.

"Yes, but I don't intend to live here," explained Janina, as though justifying herself.

"Perhaps I might recommend a boarding house to you? . . . I know a certain widow who . . ."

"Very well," interrupted the girl, "you might find me a room with some private family on Nowy Swiat, near the theater . . ."

"You belong to the theater, miss? . . . ah! . . ."

"Yes."

"Perhaps you need something else? . . . I have beautiful things for the theater."

"No, I have all I want."

"I will sell them cheap . . . as I'm an honest woman . . . cheap! They are just what you want for the theater."

"I don't need anything."

"May I die, if they are not dirt cheap! . . . These are such hard times."

She replaced all her wares in the box and drew closer to Janina.

"Perhaps you will give me a chance to make something? . . ."

"I won't buy anything else, for I don't need it!" answered Jane, growing impatient.

"I don't mean that!"

The old woman began to whisper hurriedly "I know nice young men . . . do you understand, miss? . . . rich young men! . . . That is not my business, but they asked me to . . . They'll come to see you themselves . . . Nice, rich, young men."

"What? . . . What?" cried Janina.

"Why are you so excited, Miss?"

"Get out of here, or I'll call the servant!" shouted Janina.

"Goodness, what a temper! . . . I knew at least ten ladies, who were the same as you in the beginning and afterwards they were ready to kiss my hands, if only I would introduce them to some gentleman . . ."

She did not finish, for Janina opened the door, and pushed her out.

At the theater she met Sowinska on the veranda, and immediately, in the politest manner, asked her if she did not know of some room she could rent with a private family.

"Ah, that just fits in fine! . . . If you wish, there is a room in our house that you may have. We can let you have it cheap, together with your meals. It is a very nice room on the lower floor, with windows facing the south, and a separate entrance from the hall."

They agreed on the price and Janina said she would pay her a month's rent in advance.

"So that all's settled!" said Sowinska. "You will find our house very quiet, for my daughter has no children. . . . Come, I will show you the room."

"Not until after the rehearsal; and if you haven't the time to wait, leave me the address and I will find the place myself."

Sowinska gave her the address and went away.

Janina was handed her notes and took part in the rehearsal, singing from them.

Kaczkowska wanted Halt to accompany her at the piano.

"Give me a rest, madame! I have no time!" he answered.

"If you wish, madame, I will accompany you, providing it is from notes . . ." proposed Janina.

Kaczkowska drew her eagerly away to the room with the piano and kept her busy for about an hour; but the whole company at once became interested in this chorus girl who could play the piano.

Afterward Cabinska spoke with Janina a long time, and requested her to come to her home the following day after the rehearsal.

Janina went straight from the theater to Sowinska's house to look at her room.



CHAPTER IV

"The Management has the honor of requesting the presence of the lady and gentleman artists of the Company, as also the members of the orchestra and the choruses, at a tea and social to be held at the home of the Director on the 6th of this month, after the performance. The Director of the Society of Dramatic Artists. (Signed) John, the Anointed, Cabinski.

"Well, what do you say, Pepa? . . . Will this do? . . ." the Director asked his wife after he had read aloud the invitation.

"Teddy! be quiet, I can't hear what father is reading." "Mamma, Eddy took my roll!"

"Papa, Teddy called me a jackass!"

"Silence! By God! with those children . . . Quiet them, Pepa."

"If you give me a penny, pa, I'll be quiet."

"And me too, me too!"

Cabinski held the whip on his knee under the table and waited; as soon as the children had advanced near enough, he sprang up and began to belabor them.

There arose a squealing and screeching; the door flew open and the junior directors went sliding down the banisters to the accompaniment of howls.

Cabinski calmly proceeded to read over again the invitation.

"At what time do you wish to invite them?"

"After the performance."

"You'll have to ask some of the reporters. But that must be done personally."

"I haven't time."

"Ask someone from the chorus to write the invitations for you."

"Bah! And let them make stupid mistakes? Perhaps you will write them for me, Pepa? . . . You have a neat hand."

"No, it's not proper that I, the wife of the director, should write to strange men. I told that . . . what is the name of the girl whom you engaged for the chorus? . . ."

"Orlowska."

"Yes . . . I told her to come here to-day. I like her. Kaczkowska told me that she plays the piano excellently, so the thought struck me that . . ."

"Well then, let her write the invitations; if she plays the piano, she must also know how to write."

"Not only that, but I think that she could teach Jadzia how to play . . ."

"Do you know, that's not at all a bad idea! . . . We might include that in her future salary."

"How much are you paying her?" she asked, lighting a cigarette.

"I have not yet agreed upon a price . . . but I will pay her as much as I pay the others," he answered with a strange smile.

"Which means that . . ."

"That I'll pay her a great, a great deal . . . in the future."

"Ha! ha! ha!"

Both began to laugh, and then became silent.

"John, what do you propose for the supper?"

"I don't know as yet . . . I'll talk it over at the restaurant. We'll arrange it somehow . . ."

Cabinski proceeded to make a clean copy of the invitation, while Pepa sat in a rocking-chair, puffing away at her cigarette.

"John! . . . Haven't you noticed anything peculiar about Majkowska's acting, recently?"

"No, nothing . . . if she performs a little spasmodically, that's merely her style."

"A little! . . . Why, she goes into epileptic fits! The editor told me the papers are calling attention to it."

"For God's sake, Pepa! Do you want to drive away our best actress? You ousted Nicolette, who had a gallery of her own."

"Well, and you had a great liking for her too; I happen to know something about that."

"And I could tell you something about that editor of yours . . ."

"What business is that of yours! . . . Do I interfere when you go prowling about backrooms with chorus girls?"

"But neither do I ask you what you do! . . . So what's the use of quarreling about it? . . . Only I will not let you touch Majkowska! With you it's merely a question of intrigue, while with me it's one of existence. You know right well that there is not another such pair of heroic actors as Mela Majkowska and Topolski, anywhere in the provinces, and perhaps not even at the Warsaw Theater. To tell the truth, they are the sole props of our company! You want to oust Mela, do you? . . . I tell you she has the sympathy of the whole public, the press praises her . . . and she has real talent! . . ."

"And I? . . ." she asked threateningly, facing him.

"You? . . . You also have talent, but" . . . he added softly, "but . . ."

"There are no 'buts' about it! You are an absolute idiot. . . . You have no conception whatever about acting, or plays, or artists. You are yourself a great artist, oh, such a great artist! Do you remember how you played the part of Francis in The Robbers? . . . Do you? . . . If you don't, I'll tell you . . . You played it like a shoemaker, like a circus clown! . . ."

Cabinski sprang up as though someone had struck him with a whip.

"That's a lie! The famous Krolikowski played it in the same way; they advised me to imitate him, and I did . . ."

"Krolikowski played like you? . . . You're a fool, my artist!"

"Pepa, you had better keep quiet, or I'll tell you what you are!"

"O tell me, please do tell me!" she cried out in a rage.

"Nothing great, nor even anything small, my dear."

"Tell me plainly what you mean . . ."

"Well then, I'll tell you that you are not a Modrzejewska," laughed Cabinski.

"Silence, you clown! . . ." she yelled throwing her lighted cigarette at him.

"Wait, wait, you backstairs prima donna," he hissed, growing pale with rage.

Cabinski in his dressing gown, torn at the elbows, in his night clothes and slippers, began to pace up and down the room, while Pepa, just as she had arisen from sleep, unwashed, with yesterday's stage make-up still adorning her face, and her hair all disheveled, whirled around in circles, her white and soiled petticoat rustling.

They stared at each other with furious and threatening glances. Their old competitive enmity burst out in full force. They hated each other as artists because they mutually and irresistibly envied each other their talents and success with the public.

"I played poorly, did I? . . . I played like a circus clown? . . ." he shouted.

He seized a glass from one of the racks and hurled it to the floor.

Quickly Pepa intercepted him and screened the dishes with her body.

"Get out of the way!" he growled threateningly, clenching his fists.

"These are mine!" she cried and threw the whole heap of dishes at his feet with such force that they broke into little bits.

"You cow!"

"You fool!"

"Please ma'am, let me have the money for breakfast," said the maid, at that instant entering.

"Let my husband give it to you!" answered Cabinska, and with a proud stride, went into the next room, slamming the door after her.

"Let me have the money, sir. It's late and the children are crying!"

He laid a ruble on the table, brushed his top hat with his sleeve and departed.

The nurse took a pitcher and a basket for rolls and went out.

The Cabinskis had no more time to think of their household than of their children, and cared for nothing, absorbed entirely by the theater, their roles, and their struggle for success. The canvas walls of the stage scenes and decorations representing elegant salons and interiors sufficed them entirely; there they breathed more freely and felt better. In the same way a canvas scene depicting some wild landscape with a castle on the summit of a chocolate-colored hill and a wood painted below sufficed them as a substitute for real fields and woods. The smell of mastic, cosmetics, and perfume were to them the sweetest odors. They merely came home to sleep, their real home, where they lived habitually, was on the stage and behind the scenes.

Cabinski had been in the theater some twenty years, playing continually, and still, he desired each new role for himself and envied others.

Pepa never took account of anything, but listened only to her momentary instinct and sometimes to her husband. She doted on the melodrama, on strained and nerve-thrilling situations; she liked a sweeping gesture, an exalted tone of voice, and glaring novelties. Her pathos was often of the exaggerated variety, but she played with fervor. A certain play, or some accent or word would move her so deeply that even after leaving the stage she would still shed real tears behind the scenes.

She knew her parts better than anyone else, for she would memorize them with mechanical precision. For her children she cared about as much as for her old dresses: she bore them and left them to the care of her husband and the nurse.

Immediately after Cabinski's departure Pepa called through the door, "Nurse, come here!"

The nurse had just returned with the coffee and the boys whom she had dragged in from the yard with difficulty.

She served the breakfast to the children and promised: "Eddy . . . you will get a pair of new shoes . . . papa will buy them for you. Teddy will get a new suit and Jadzia a dress . . . Drink your coffee, dears!"

She patted their heads, handed them the rolls and wiped their faces with maternal solicitude. She loved them and fussed over them as though they were her own children.

"Nurse!" shouted Cabinska, sticking her head through the door.

"Yes, I hear you."

"Where is Tony?"

"She's gone to the laundry."

"You will go, nurse, for my dress to Sowinska on Widok Street. Do you know where it is? . . ."

"Of course, I know! . . . That skinny woman who's as cross as a chained dog. . . ."

"Go right away."

"Mamma! . . . let us also go with nurse . . ." begged the children, for they feared their mother.

"You will take the children along with you, nurse."

"Of course, that's understood . . . I wouldn't leave them here alone!"

She dressed the children, put on a sort of woolen dress with broad red and white stripes, covered her head with a kerchief, and went out with them.

Cabinska dressed and was about to go out, when the bell rang. A small, rather corpulent and very active gentleman pushed his way in. It was the counselor.

His face was carefully shaven, he wore gold-rimmed glasses on his small nose, and a smile, that seemed glued there, on his thin lips.

"May I come in? . . . Will Madame Directress permit it? . . . Only for a minute, for I must be right off again! . . ." he recited rapidly.

"Of course, the esteemed counselor is always welcome. . . ." called Cabinska, appearing.

"Good morning! Pray let me kiss your little hand. . . . You look charming to-day. I merely dropped in here on my way . . ."

"Please be seated."

The counselor sat down, wiped his glasses with his handkerchief, smoothed his very sparse, but ungrayed black hair, hastily crossed his legs, and blinked a few times with neuralgic eyes.

"I read in to-day's Messenger a very flattering mention about you, Madame Directress."

"It's unmerited, for I don't know how that role ought to be played."

"You played it beautifully, wonderfully!"

"Oh, you're a naughty flatterer, Mr. Counselor! . . ." she chided.

"I speak nothing but the truth, the unadulterated truth, my word of honor!"

"Please ma'am it is already noon," interrupted the nurse, who had returned.

"You are bound for the theater, Madame Directress?"

"Yes, I'll drop in to see the rehearsal, and then take a walk about town."

"Then we will go together, agreed? . . ." asked the counselor. "On the way we shall settle a little piece of business."

Cabinska glanced at him uneasily. He was again blinking his eyes, crossing his feet, and adjusting his glasses which had a habit of continually slipping off.

"No doubt he wants that money, . . ." thought Cabinska, as they were going down the stairs.

The counselor, in the meanwhile, was smiling and chirping away in honeyed tones.

This strange individual would show up at the garden-theater at the very first performance and vanish after the last, until the following spring. He freely loaned money which was never returned to him. He would give suppers, bring gifts of candy to the actresses, take the young novices under his wing and was always reputed to be in love with some actress platonically. Immediately upon his first appearance, Cabinski had borrowed one hundred rubles from him and before all those present he had intentionally forced him to accept as security his wife's bracelet with the object of convincing them that he had no money.

They entered the theater and quietly took their seats, for the rehearsal was already in full swing and Kaczkowska with Topolski were just in the midst of a capital love scene.

The counselor listened, bowed on all sides with a smile and whispered to the directress: "Love is a splendid thing . . . on the stage!"

"Even in life it is not bad," she remarked.

"True love is very rare in life, so I prefer it on the stage, for here I can enjoy it every day," he spoke hurriedly, and his eyelids began to blink again.

"You have been disillusioned, Counselor?"

"Oh no, by no means! . . . How are you, Piesh!"

"Well, sated with food, and bored," replied a tall actor with a handsome, thoughtful face, extending his hand.

"Will you smoke some Egyptian cigarettes?"

"I will, if you will let me have some," he answered coolly.

"Mrs. Piesh is as well and as jealous as ever, eh? . . ." inquired the counselor, handing him a cigarette.

"Just as you are always in a good humor . . . Both are diseases."

"So you consider humor a disease, eh?" asked the counselor.

"I hold that a normal man ought to be indifferent and care for nothing."

"How long have you been riding that hobbyhorse?"

"Truth is usually learned late."

"How long will you stick to that truth?"

"Perhaps forever, if I can find nothing better."

"Piesh, to the stage!" came the voice of the stage-director.

The actor arose stiffly, and with a quick, automatic step, went behind the scenes.

"A curious, a very curious fellow!" whispered the counselor.

"Yes, but very tiresome with his ever-lasting truths, ideals, and other foolish haberdashery!" cried a young actor dressed like a doll in a light suit, a pink-striped shirt and yellow calf-skin pumps.

"Ah, Wawrzecki! . . . You must have again slain some innocent beauty, for your face is as radiant as the sun . . ."

"It's easy for you to joke, Mr. Counselor! . . ." he defended himself with a knowing smile, advancing his shapely foot. He posed gracefully, raised his hand, and flashed his jeweled rings, for the directress was gazing at him through half-closed eyes.

"Well then, in your estimation who is not tiresome, eh? . . . Come now, confess my boy!"

"The counselor, for he has humor and a good heart; the director when he pays; the public when it applauds us; pretty and kind women, the spring, if it is warm; people, when they are happy, all that is beautiful pleasant and smiling; while tiresome things are all those that are ugly: cares, tears, suffering, poverty, old age and cold. . . ."

"Who is that young lady over there?" inquired the counselor, pointing to Janina who was listening attentively to the rehearsal.

"A novice."

"She has an engaging expression. Her face shows good breeding and intelligence. Do you know who she is? . . ."

"Wicek!" called Cabinska to the boy who was playing about the garden, "go and ask that lady, standing near the box, to come here."

Wicek ran over to Janina circled about her, glanced into her eyes and said: "The old woman over there wishes to see you."

"What old woman? . . . Who? . . ." she asked, unable to understand him.

"Cabinska, Mrs. Pepa, the directress, of course! . . ."

Janina approached slowly, while the counselor observed her intently.

"Please have a seat, mademoiselle. This is our dear counselor, the patron of our theater," spoke Cabinska, introducing him.

"I beg your pardon!" cried the counselor, grasping her hand and turning the palm to the light.

"Don't be afraid, Miss Orlowska! . . . The counselor has an innocent mania of fortune telling," cried Cabinska merrily, peering over the shoulder of the counselor into the palm he was examining.

"Ho! ho! a strange one, a strange one!" whispered the old man.

He took from his pocket a small magnifying-glass and through it examined minutely the lines of the palm, the fingernails, the finger joints, and the entire hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen! We tell fortunes here from the hands, the feet, and something else besides! . . . Here we predict the future, and dispense talent, virtue, and money in the future. Admission only five copecks, only five copecks! . . . for the poorer people only ten groszy! Please step in, ladies and gentlemen, please step in!" cried Wawrzecki, excellently imitating the voice of the show criers on Ujazdowski Square.

The actors and actresses surrounded the trio on all sides.

"Tell us something, Mr. Counselor!"

"Will she marry soon?"

"When will she eclipse Modrzejewska?"

"Will she get a rich hubby?"

"How many suitors has she had in the past?"

The counselor did not answer, but quietly continued to examine both of Janina's palms.

She heard those derisive remarks, but was unable to move, for that strange man actually held her pinned to her seat. She felt herself burning with anger, yet could not move her hands which he held.

Finally, the counselor released her and said to those surrounding them: "For once you might refrain from your clownishness, for sometimes it is not so foolish as it is inhuman. I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, for having exposed you to their rudeness, . . . I greatly beg your pardon, but I simply could not resist examining your hands; that is my weakness. . . ."

He kissed her hand ostentatiously and turned to the surprised Cabinska: "Come, let us go, Mrs. Directress!"

Janina was consumed with such curiosity, that, in spite of all those spectators, she asked quietly: "Will you not tell me anything Mr. Counselor?"

The counselor gazed about him, and then bent toward Janina and whispered very quietly: "Now, I cannot . . . In two weeks, when I return, I will tell you all."

"Oh come, Counselor!" cried Cabinska, "Oh, I almost forgot! . . . Will it be possible for you to come to see me after the rehearsal Miss Orlowska?" she asked, turning to Janina.

"Certainly, I'll come," answered Janina, resuming her seat.

"Where shall we go, Madame Directress?" asked the counselor. He seemed less jovial, and wrapt in thought.

"I suppose we might go to my pastry shop."

Cabinska did not question him, and only after they had seated themselves at the pastry shop, where she regularly spent a few hours each day, drinking chocolate, smoking cigarettes, and gazing at the street crowds, did she venture to ask him with a pretended indifference: "What did you notice in that hussy's hands, Mr. Counselor?"

The counselor shifted impatiently, put his binoculars upon his nose, and called to the waiter, "Black coffee and very light chocolate!"

Then he turned to Cabinska. "You see, that is a secret . . . to be sure, one that means little, but nevertheless, not my own to disclose."

Cabinska insisted, for merely to say: "a secret," throws all women out of balance; but he told her nothing, only remarking abruptly, "I am leaving town, Mrs. Directress."

"Where are you going?" she inquired, greatly surprised.

"I must . . ." he said, "I will return in two weeks. Before I go, I would like to settle our . . ."

Cabinska frowned and waited to hear what he would say further.

"For you see, it might happen that I would return only in the fall when you will no longer be in Warsaw."

"I surmised long ago that you were an old usurer," Cabinska was thinking, tinkling her glass with a spoon.

"Some fruit cakes!" he called to the waiter and then, turning to her again, continued . . . "And that is why I wish to return to you, dear lady, your bracelet."

"But we have not yet the money. Our success is continually being interrupted . . . we have so many old payments to meet . . ."

"Oh, don't bother about the money. Imagine that I am giving you this for your name day as a small token of friendship . . . will you?" he asked, slipping the bracelet upon her plump wrist.

"Oh, Counselor, Counselor! if I did not love my John so much, I would . . ." she cried, overjoyed at regaining her bracelet without any obligations. She squeezed his hands so heartily and beamed upon him with her joyous gaze so closely, that he felt her breath upon his cheeks.

He gently pushed her aside, biting his lips.

"Ah, Counselor, you are an ideal man!"

"Oh, let us drop that! . . . You can invite me to be a godfather to your next child."

"Oh, you're a rogue, Mr. Counselor! . . . What's that? . . . you already want to depart?"

"My train leaves in two hours. Goodbye!"

He paid the bill at the buffet and hurried away, sending her a smile through the window.

Cabinska still sat there, gazing out upon the street.

"Is it possible that he loves me?" she thought to herself, sipping her cooled chocolate.

She pulled some role out of her pocket, read a few lines, and again gazed out upon the street.

The dilapidated hacks, pulled by lean horses, dragged along lazily; the tramways rumbled by; along the sidewalks people threaded like a long, immovable ribbon.

The clock chimed three. Cabinska arose and started for home, walking slowly until she spied the editor walking with Nicolette and the calm horizon of her mind suddenly became clouded.

"He, with Nicolette? . . . with that . . . base intriguer?"

Already from a distance she scorched them with the gaze of a Gorgon.

At the corner of Warecka Street, Nicolette suddenly disappeared and the editor approached her with a beaming countenance.

"Good morning! . . ." he cried, extending his hand.

Pepa measured him coolly and turned her face away.

"What sort of nonsense is this, Pepa?" he asked, quietly.

"Oh, you are unspeakably mean!" she retorted.

"A comedy of some kind again? . . ." he queried.

"You dare to speak to me in that way?"

"Well . . . I'll quit then and merely say: good-day!" he snapped back angrily, bowed stiffly and, before she could bethink herself, jumped into a hack and drove away.

Cabinska was petrified with indignation.

Cabinska, on returning home whipped the children, scolded the nurse, and locked herself in her room.

She heard her husband enter, ask for her, and knock at her door; when dinner was served, she did not come out, but paced angrily up and down her room.

Soon thereafter, Janina arrived. Cabinska greeted her cordially in her boudoir, becoming suddenly unrecognizably hospitable.

Janina left alone, began to explore that boudoir with curiosity, for, although the entire house looked like a junk shop, or a railroad waiting-room of the third class, filled with packs, valises and trunks, this one room possessed an almost luxurious air. It had two windows opening upon the garden, the walls were decorated with a paper resembling brocatelle, and cupids were painted on the ceiling. The grotesquely carved furniture was upholstered with crimson silk striped with gold. A cream-colored rug in imitation of antique Italian covered the floor. A set of Shakespeare, bound in gilded morocco lay on a lacquered table painted in Chinese designs.

Janina did not pay much attention to all this, for she was entirely absorbed by the wreaths hanging on the walls which bore such inscriptions as these: "To our companion on the occasion of her birthday," "To a distinguished artist," "From the grateful public," "To the Directress from the Company," "From the admirers of your talent." The laurel branches and palm leaves were yellow and shrunken from age and hung there covered with dust and cobwebs. The broad white, yellow, and red ribbons streamed down the walls like separate colors of the rainbow with their gold-stamped letters proclaiming glories that had long since passed into oblivion. Those inscriptions and withered wreaths gave the room the appearance of a mortuary chapel.

Janina was looking through an album, when Cabinska quietly entered. Her face wore an expression of suffering and melancholy; she dropped down heavily into a chair, sighed deeply and whispered, "Pardon me for letting you bore yourself here."

"Oh I didn't feel a bit bored!"

"This is my sanctuary. Here I lock myself up when life becomes unbearable. I come here to recall a happy past and to dream of that which will never more return . ." she added, indicating the roles and the wreaths hanging on the walls.

"Are you ill, Madame Directress? . . . perhaps I am intruding, and solitude is the best medicine." Janina spoke with sincere sympathy.

"Oh, please stay! . . . It affords me real relief to speak with a person who is, as yet, a stranger to this world of falsehood and vanity!" she said with emphasis, as though reciting a role.

"I don't know whether I am worthy of your confidence," answered Janina modestly.

"Oh, my artistic intuition never deceives me! . . . I pray you sit nearer to me! So you have never before been in the theater, mademoiselle?"

"No."

"How I envy you! . . . Ah, if I could begin over again, I would not know all this bitterness and disappointment! Do you love the theater?"

"I have sacrificed almost everything for it."

"Oh, the fate of artists is a sad one! One must sacrifice all; peace, domestic happiness, love, family, and friends and for what? . . . for that which they write about us; for such wreaths that last only a few days; for the handclaps of the tiresome throng. . . . Oh, beware the provinces, mademoiselle! . . . Look at me . . . Do you see those wreaths? . . . They are splendid and withered, are they not? And yet, not so long ago I played at Lwow. . . ."

She paused for a moment as though fascinated by the memory of those days.

"The stages of the whole world were open to me. The director of the Comedie Francaise came purposely to see me and offer me an engagement. . . ."

"You possess also a mastery of French, madame?"

"Do not interrupt me. I was paid a salary of several thousand rubles; the papers could not find words strong enough to praise my acting; I was pelted with flowers and bracelets set with diamonds! (She unconsciously adjusted her cheap bracelet.) Counts and princes courted my favors. . . . Then came a great misfortune which changed everything; I fell in love . . . Yes, do not wonder at that! I loved, as deeply as it is possible to love, the most beautiful and best man in the whole world. . . . He was a nobleman, a prince and heir to a large estate. We were about to be married. I cannot tell you how happy we were! . . . Then . . . like a bolt from the blue sky . . . his family, the old prince, a tyrannical magnate without a heart parted us. . . . He took him away and wanted to pay me a hundred thousand guldens or even a million, if only I would renounce my beloved. I threw the money at his feet and showed him the door. He avenged himself cruelly. He spread the most dishonorable calumnies about me, bribed the press, and persecuted me at every step, the base wretch! . . . I had to leave Lwow and my life took an entirely different turn . . . a different turn . . ."

Cabinska paced up and down the room, tears in her eyes, love in her smile, a sad bitterness upon her lips, a tragic mask of resignation upon her face, forsaken, violent grief in her voice.

She acted the tale with such mastery that Janina believed everything.

"If you knew how sincerely I sympathize with you, madame! . . . What a dreadful fate!"

"That is already past! . . ." answered Cabinska, dropping into her chair.

She herself had come almost to believe in those stories, retold with numerous variations a hundred times over to all those who were willing to listen. Sometimes, on ending her account, moved by the picture of that fancied misfortune, she would actually suffer.

Cabinska had acted the parts of so many unfortunate and betrayed women that she had already lost all memory of the bounds of her own individuality; her own emotions became merged and identified in ever greater degree with the characters which she impersonated, and thus it happened that her fanciful tales were not downright lies.

After a long silence, Cabinska asked in a calm voice, "You live at Mrs. Sowinska's, mademoiselle?"

"Not yet," answered Janina, "I have already rented the room, but they have to renovate it. In the meanwhile, I am living at the hotel."

"Kaczkowska and Halt told me that you play the piano very well."

"A little bit."

"I wanted to ask you, if you would not teach my Yadzia? . . . She is a very bright girl and has a good ear for music."

"With real pleasure. My knowledge is rather limited, but I can teach your daughter the rudiments of music. . . . Only, I don't know whether I will have enough time. . . ."

"Oh, certainly! And as to your fee, we shall include that in your salary."

"Very well. . . . Is your daughter already started?"

"Excellently. You can convince yourself immediately. . . . Nurse, bring Yadzia here!" called Cabinska.

They passed into the next room in which stood the director's bed, a few packs and baskets, and an old rattle-box of a piano.

Janina heard Yadzia play and agreed that she would give her lessons regularly between two and three o'clock in the afternoon, when her parents were not at home.

"When are you to make your first appearance at the theater?" asked Cabinska.

"To-day, in the Gypsy Baron."

"Have you a costume?"

"Miss Falkowska promised to loan me one."

"Come with me. . . . Perhaps I'll find something for you. . . ."

They went into the room where the children slept with the nurse. Cabinska pulled out of a package a fairly well-preserved costume and gave it to Janina.

"You see, mademoiselle, we furnish the costumes, but since the members of the company prefer to have their own, because ours, of course, cannot be so very elegant, ours often lie here unused. . . . I will loan you this one."

"I also will have my own."

"That is best."

They took leave of each other very cordially and the nurse carried Janina's costume after her to the hotel.

With such passionate eagerness did Janina anticipate her first appearance on the stage, that she arrived at the theater when there was hardly anyone as yet behind the scenes. The chorus girls assembled slowly and dressed even more slowly. Conversation, laughter, subdued whisperings went on as usual, but she heard nothing, so preoccupied was she with her dressing.

They all began to help her, laughing because she did not even have powder or rouge.

"What, you never powdered yourself?" they chorused.

"No . . . What for? . . ." she answered simply.

"We'll have to make her a face, for she's too pale," remarked one of them.

They rubbed her face with a layer of white cosmetic, shaded this with rouge, carmined her lips, underscored her eyes with a little pencil dipped in black pigment, and curled and pinned her hair. She was passed on from hand to hand and given a thousand advices and warnings.

"On entering the stage look straight at the public, so that you don't trip."

"And before you enter, see that you cross yourself."

"Always enter with your right foot foremost."

"Now you look fine! . . . but do you want to appear on the stage in short skirts without wearing tights?"

"I haven't any! . . ."

All began to laugh at her embarrassed look.

"I will loan you a pair," cried Zielinska. "I think they'll fit you." They treated her with undisguised favor, for they had heard that she was to teach Cabinska's daughter and that Pepa had loaned her a costume.

Janina, looking in the mirror, hardly recognized herself. It seemed as though she wore a mask, only slightly resembling her own face and with that strange expression that all the chorus girls wore.

She went downstairs to Sowinska.

"My dear madame, tell me truly, how do I look?" she begged, all excited and flushed.

Sowinska scrutinized her from all sides and, with her finger, spread the rouge more thoroughly on her cheeks.

"Who gave you that costume?" she asked.

"Madame Directress loaned it to me."

"Oh! something must have melted her today!"

"She told me such sad stories. . . ."

"The actress! . . . if she only played that way on the stage there would be no better in the world."

"You must be joking, madame! . . . She told me about Lwow and her past."

"She's a liar, that old hag! She was then the sweetheart of some hussar and made such scandals that they turned her out of the theater. What was she at the Lwow theater? . . . a chorus girl only. Ho! ho! those are old tricks. . . . We all know them here long since!"

"Tell me how I look?" asked Janina at length.

"Beautiful. . . . I'll wager they'll all be chasing after you!"

An increasing nervousness seized Janina. She walked up and down the stage, peered through the hole in the curtain, viewed herself in all the mirrors, and then tried to sit still and wait, but could not endure it. The feverish excitement and nervousness attendant upon a first appearance shook her as with the ague. She could not stand or sit still for a single moment.

It seemed as though she did not see the people, the preparations that were going on about her, the lights, or even the stage itself, but only had in her brain the reflection of a confused and moving mass of eyes and faces. At each moment she would gaze with terror at the audience and feel as though her heart were ceasing to beat.

When the bell rang for the second time, she hurried off the stage and took her place in the chorus that was already assembled behind the scenes; while waiting for the moment to enter, she unconsciously crossed herself, and her whole body trembled so violently that one of the chorus girls, noticing her confusion, took her by the arm.

"Enter!" shouted the stage-director. The throng carried her along with it and pushed her to the front of the stage.

The sudden silence and magnified glare of light restored her senses somewhat, and after leaving the stage she stood behind one of the scenes and completely regained her composure.

On her second entrance she felt only a slight tremor. She sang, heard the music, and gazed straight at the public. She was also emboldened by seeing the editor sitting in the front row and encouraging her with a friendly smile. She kept looking at him and after that she was able to distinguish with increasing clearness individual faces in the audience.

In some scene in which the chorus promenaded about the back of the stage, while a comic dialogue was going on at the front, Janina's companions indulged in whispered conversations.

"Brona, look! Your fellow is there in the third row toward the left."

"Oh look! Dasha is in the theater . . . goodness, how she is dolled up. . . ."

"Siwinska! fasten my hooks, for I feel my skirt is falling down."

"Lou! your wig is coming off."

"Look to your own shags!"

"I'm going to Marceline with someone to-morrow . . . perhaps you will go with us, Zielinska?"

"Look at the eyes that student is making at me!"

"I don't care a snap for penniless plugs."

"But what merry chaps they are!"

"No, thank you! They have nothing but whiskey and sardines. That's a treat, only for those of the street."

"Hush! Cabinska is sitting in that box."

"My gracious, what a maidenly make-up she has to-day!"

"Quiet, we sing!"

Behind the scenes stood a great variety of people: waitresses, stage-hands, restaurant boys, and actors waiting for their cues to enter all these were gazing on the stage.

Cabinska's nurse, with the two eldest children, was sitting near the proscenium under the ropes of the curtain.

Wawrzecki from behind the scenes was violently beckoning to Mimi who was just then singing a duet with Wladek. In the pauses, the actress would spitefully stick out her tongue at him.

"Give me the key to the house . . . I forgot my shoes, and I need them right away!" he whispered.

"It's in my skirt pocket in the dressing-room," she answered, backing away toward the center of the stage with a broad musical phrase on her lips.

"Halt" was banging the desk with his baton, for Wladek was cutting short his tones and continually wavering. The threatening anger of the orchestra director only made him all the more nervous, and his singing was growing steadily worse.

"The damned Hun is purposely trying to trip me!" he muttered angrily under his breath, embracing the singing Mimi in the love scene.

"For God's sake don't squeeze me so hard!" panted Mimi, at the same time smiling at him rapturously.

"For I adore you with the frenzy of love . . . for I adore you!" sang Wladek with fiery intonation.

"Are you crazy? I will be all black and blue and . ."

She suddenly broke off, for Wladek had finished his song and the applause came roaring like an avalanche, so she pulled him by the hand and they walked to the front of the stage to bow to the audience.

During the intermission Janina observed the editor standing in the center aisle, conversing with some stout, blond man.

"Can you tell me, sir, with what paper that editor is connected?" Janina asked the stage-director, who was supervising the arrangement of the scenery for the next act.

"With no paper, probably. He's merely a theatrical critic."

"He told me himself that . . ."

"Ha, ha!" laughed the stage-director, "I see you're green!"

"But he is sitting in the chairs reserved for the press," persisted Janina stating what she thought was a convincing argument.

"What of that? There are more of his kind there. Do you see that light blonde? He alone is a real writer and the rest are merely migratory birds. God alone knows what their occupation is . . . but since they hobnob with everybody, talk a lot, have money from somewhere, and occupy the foremost places everywhere, no one even bothers asking who they are."

"Ah, you look so fascinating, so fascinating" cried the editor at that instant rushing in upon the stage and already from a distance extending his hands to her. "A veritable portrait by Greuze! Only a little more courage and everything will go smoothly. I will insert an item to-morrow about your first appearance on the stage."

"Thank you," she answered coolly, without looking at him.

The editor turned about and made off for the actors' dressing-room.

"Good evening, gentlemen!" he called entering.

"How are things going in the hall? Were you at the box office? . . ."

"Nearly all the seats are sold out."

"How is the play taking?"

"Well, very well! . . . I see, Mr. Director that you have replenished the chorus: that charming, new blonde attracts all eyes . . . ."

"Good, good. . . . Hurry there, give me my belly!"

"Mr. Director, please let me have an order for two rubles. I must immediately send for my boots," begged some actor, hastily pulling on his costume.

"After the performance!" answered Cabinski, holding the pillow to his stomach, "tie it fast, Andy!"

They wrapt him about with long strips like a mummy.

"Mr. Director, I need my boots on the stage. . . . I cannot play without them!"

"Go to the devil, my dear sir, and don't disturb me now. . . . Ring!" he called to the stage-director.

Cabinski, whenever he played, created a big confusion in the dressing-room. He always suffered from stage fright, so he would try to overcome it by shouting, scolding, and quarreling over every trifle. The costumer, the tailor, the property man all had to hustle about him and continually remind him lest he forget something. Despite the fact that he always commenced dressing early, he was always late. Only on the stage did he recover his equanimity.

Now it was the same; his cane had been mislaid and he rushed about, wildly shouting: "My cane! Who took my cane! . . . My cane! Damn it! I must go right on!"

"You snort like an elephant in the dressing-room, but on the stage you buzz as quietly as a fly," slowly remarked Stanislawski, who hated all noises.

"If you don't like to hear it, go out into the hall."

"I'll stay right here, and I want quiet. No one can dress in peace with you around."

"Podesta, to the stage!" called the stage-director.

Cabinski ran out, grabbed a cane out of somebody's hand, tied a black handkerchief about his neck and rushed on the stage.

Stanislawski departed behind the scenes, all the others dispersed, and the dressing-room became deserted, only the tailor remaining to gather up the costumes scattered over the floor and tables and take them to the storeroom.

In the dressing-room of the leading ladies of the caste such a storm had broken loose that Cabinski, who was just leaving the stage, went there to pour oil on the troubled waters.

As he entered, Kaczkowska threw herself at him from one side and Mimi from the other; both grasped him by the hands and each sought to out-shout the other.

"If you allow such things to happen, Director, I will leave the company! . . ."

"It's a scandal, Director! . . . everybody saw it. . . . I will not stay in her company another hour!"

"Director! she . . ."

"Now don't lie!"

"It's insulting!"

"It's base and ridiculous!"

"For God's sake! what's all this about?" cried Cabinski in desperation.

"I will tell you how it happened, Director.

"It is I who ought to tell, for she is a liar!"

"Now my dears, please be quiet or I swear I'll go right out."

"It was this way. I received a bouquet, for it was most plainly intended for me, and this . . . lady, who happened to be standing nearer, cut me off and took my bouquet. . . . And, instead of giving it to me, to whom it belonged, she brazenly bowed and kept it for herself!" cried Kaczkowska amid tears and bursts of anger.

At that Mimi began to cry.

"Mimi, you will blur the paint under your eyes!" called someone.

Mimi immediately stopped crying.

"What do you ladies want me to do?" asked Cabinski, when he found an opportunity to speak.

"Tell her to give me back that bouquet and apologize."

"I can, but with my fist . . ." retorted Mimi. "You can ask the chorus, Director . . . they all saw."

"The chorus from the fourth act!" called Cabinski behind the scenes.

There entered a throng of women and men already half-undressed, and among them Janina.

"Well, let us arrange a judgment of Solomon!"

An increasing number of onlookers began to crowd into the dressing-room and derisive remarks, aimed at the generally disliked Kaczkowska, flew about.

"Who saw to whom the bouquet was given?" asked Cabinski.

"We weren't taking notice," all replied, unwilling to incur the disfavor of either of the contestants. Only Janina who detested injustice, finally said: "The bouquet was given to Miss Zarzecka. I stood beside her and saw distinctly."

"What does that calf want here? She came from the street and thinks she can interfere in what's none of her business!" cried Kaczkowska.

Janina advanced, her voice hoarse with anger.

"You have no right to insult me, madame!" she cried. "Do you hear! I haven't ever let anyone insult me, nor will I!"

A strange silence suddenly fell, for all were impressed by the dignity and force of Janina's words. She glared at Kaczkowska with glowing eyes and then turned on her heel and left the room.

Cabinski had fled to the box office after hastily divesting himself of his costume.

"Whew! she's a sound nut, that new one."

"Kaczkowska will never forgive her that . . ."

"What can she do? . . . Miss Orlowska has the backing of the management."

Mimi, immediately after the play, went to the dressing-room of the chorus where she found Janina still agitated.

"How good you are!" cried the actress effusively.

"What I did was right . . . that's all," Janina replied.

"Take a trip with us to Bielany, won't you?" begged Mimi.

"When? . . . And who are going?"

"We're going within the next few days. There will be Wawrzecki, I, a certain author, a very jolly chap, whose play we are to present, Majkowska, Topolski and you. You must come with us!"

After lengthy persuasions and kisses, which Janina received indifferently, she finally agreed to accompany them.

They waited for Wawrzecki and afterwards all went together to a pastry shop for tea, taking with them also Topolski, who there composed a circular addressed to the whole company requesting them to appear without fail at the morrow's rehearsal, punctually at ten o'clock.



CHAPTER V

For Cabinski all days on which there was a performance were important days, but only three days were extraordinary: Christmas Eve, Easter Day, and . . . the name day of his wife which fell on the 19th of July, sacred to St. Vincent de Paul. On those three days the director and his wife would hold a reception on a grand scale.

Cabinski the miser would vanish, and in his place would appear Cabinski the munificent, dispensing hospitality after the ancient custom of the Polish nobility, while certain deeply hidden hereditary cells of lavishness opened up in his ego. The guests were received and feted generously and no expense was spared. And, if later, as a result of this, advances on salaries were smaller for a month or so, their deferment more frequent, and the director's complaints of a deficit more numerous, hardly anyone minded, for all enjoyed themselves to the utmost, particularly on the name day of the directress.

Cabinska's Christian name was Vincentine, but none bothered their heads about why her husband called her "Pepa," for nobody was interested to that extent.

In accordance with the announcement of Topolski, the company assembled punctually for the rehearsal. They were to play The Martyr by D'Ennery, in which the title role, one of the showiest and most lachrymose in her repertory, was invariably acted each year by the directress. She played it really well, putting into it her entire store of tears and vocal lamentations, and had the deep satisfaction of thrilling the public.

Those name day performances were usually a real benefit for all kinds of novices, for the caste was purposely made up of the poorest players so that the acting of Pepa might thereby shine forth more effectively.

Cabinska went direct to the stage without speaking to anyone and during the entire rehearsal wore on her face an expression of tender emotion and absorption. At the end of the rehearsal the entire company gathered about her and Topolski came forward. Cabinska modestly lowered her eyes and, pretending to be surprised, waited.

"Allow me, esteemed Directress to extend to you in the name of your fellow-actors and actresses their most cordial felicitations on the occasion of your name day and to wish you with all our hearts that you may continue to remain for a long time the ornament of our stage and a blessing to your husband and children. In grateful appreciation of your artistic services and your companionship, the company begs you, my dear madame, to accept this humble token of our affection which is only a poor return for your goodness and kind-heartedness."

Topolski ended and handed her an open case in which was a set of sapphire gems bought from the contributions of the whole company. He kissed her hand and stepped aside.

Then all began to approach Cabinska separately; the men kissed her hands, while the women threw themselves on her neck with protestations of friendship and good wishes.

Wladek, who had been the first to pay his tribute at hand-kissing, drew Topolski aside behind the scenes.

"Spit out the dregs of that congratulatory tommyrot, or you'll poison yourself with such a big dose of hypocrisy."

"But it won't poison her."

"Bah! the sapphires cost one hundred and twenty rubles; for so much money she can listen a whole week."

"Thank you, thank you with my whole heart! You put me to shame my dear comrades, for in truth I do not know what I have done to merit so much kindness," said Cabinska with emotion. Really, the sapphires were very pretty.

The director smiled, rubbed his hands, and invited all to his home after the performance.

The directress singled out for a particularly effusive kiss Janina who, led by sympathy, had brought her a lovely bouquet of roses, explaining that she had not contributed to the fund for the general gift as it was collected before her advent into the company.

Cabinska would not part with Janina and took her along with her to dinner.

"Truly, they must be very good people and must love you," said Janina at the table.

"Once a year will not ruin them," answered Cabinska merrily.

Together they went to the pastry shop so as not to interfere with the preparations that were being made for the evening reception. She sat there relating to Janina the history of her past name day celebrations with a tender pathos which could not, however, disguise a certain feeling of bitterness and uneasiness over the fact that the editor had not even sent her a card of greeting.

The performance was a real ovation. From the public she received a mass of flowers, while the editor sent her a big basket of them together with an imposing bracelet.

That overwhelmed her. As soon as he appeared behind the scenes, she drew him into the darkest corner and kissed him with fiery passion.

The Cabinski home presented an unusual appearance. In the first room, in the middle of a huge rug that completely covered the dirty floor, was a circular stand bearing a fan-shaped palm, while two mirrors with marble consoles stood in the corners. Heavy, cherry-colored, velvet portieres were draped over the windows and the doors. A clump of azaleas and rhododendrons between the windows formed an oasis of gorgeous greenery, accentuating the beautiful lines of a yellowish plaster statue of Venus de Milo which stood on a pedestal draped with purple cloth.

The piano at the further end of the room, decked with a garland of artificial flowers, bore upon it a huge golden tray stacked with visiting cards. Four little tables with little blue chairs surrounding them were placed in the most brilliantly lighted parts of the room. The tarnished and chipped gilded frames of the mirrors were skillfully masked with red muslin, pinned artistically with flowers. The torn wall paper was covered with pictures. The whole salon presented so elegant and artistic an appearance, that Cabinska, on returning from the theater stood amazed and cried out enthusiastically: "A splendid scene! . . . John you are a master-decorator!"

"Heavens! . . . it's as beautiful as in a comedy!" added the nurse, crossing the salon on tiptoe.

The second and larger room which ordinarily served the purpose of a store room, crammed with scenic odds and ends, had now been transformed into a dining room and dazzled with its restaurant-like splendor: the whiteness of its table covers, its polished trays, its bouquets of flowers, its mass of burnished dishes, and its formality.

Cabinska hardly had time to dress herself in a stately lily-colored gown in which her faded complexion, ruined by cosmetics, took on a youthful expression and freshness, when the company began thronging in. The ladies retired to Cabinska's room adjoining the boudoir, while the gentlemen left their street attire in the kitchen divided in two by a French wall painted in the style of Louis XV, which had been brought from the stage.

Wicek, in theatrical livery that consisted of boots with yellow, cardboard tops, a blue spencer a few sizes too big for him, decked with red cord and a mass of gold buttons, helped the actors to lay aside their wraps with a grave and stiff mien, like a real groom from an English comedy; but his roguish disposition could not long endure the mood.

"What a monkey the director has made of me, eh? My own mother wouldn't know me in these duds. No doubt I'll have to pay for it all by going without supper or absolution!" he whispered, smiling.

The ladies all in gala array, rouged and charming, began to fill the room with a stiff and icy atmosphere, sitting about immovable and shy.

Janina arrived rather late, for she had a long distance to come from her hotel, and wished to dress carefully. She greeted everyone, and her eyes wandered with a look of surprise over the room, struck by the tone of solemnity that reigned over all. Dressed in a cream-colored silk gown shading off into heliotrope, with gentians in her hair and corsage, tall and lithe, with her rosy complexion and reddish-golden hair, she looked very original and beautiful. She possessed a great deal of grace and natural distinction, and moved about with ease, as though accustomed to the atmosphere of the salon, while the rest of the company felt unnatural and constrained by the theatrical elegance of their surroundings. They walked about, conversed and smiled, as though they were on the stage, playing some very difficult role that demanded continual attention. One could see that the very carpet under their feet restrained them, that they sat down with a certain fear on the silk-lined chairs, that they seemed to be merely passing through the room, afraid to touch any of the objects about them.

It was a festive reception with wine served by the restaurant waiters, and with trays of cakes and liqueurs circulating about in ponderous bottles. This only added to the restraint of the ladies. They knew not how to eat or drink gracefully, they feared to stain their dresses and the furniture and feared also to serve as the butt of ridicule for a few gentlemen who were not at all impressed with this sham elegance, and were gazing at them and making spiteful remarks.