Majkowska, who to-day presented a truly stately appearance in her light yellow dress with a border of roses, with her black, almost ebony hair, olive complexion, and classically beautiful face—a typical Veronese—took Janina by the arm and gracefully promenaded about the salon with her, casting proud glances at those about them.

On the other hand, her mother, whom some mischievous person had seated on a little tabouret, was undergoing agonies. She had in one hand a glassful of wine, in the other a tart and a cake in her lap. She drank the wine and was at a loss what to do with the glass. She gazed pleadingly at her daughter, grew red in the face, and finally asked Zielinska, who was sitting near her: "My dear lady, what shall I do with this glass?"

"Stand it under the chair."

The old woman did as she was advised. Everyone began to laugh at her, so she picked it up again and held it in her hand.

Old Mrs. Niedzielska, the mother of Wladek and the owner of a house on Piwna Street, who was always honored by the Cabinskis, sat under the shade of the palm grove with Kaczkowska, and continually followed her son with her eyes.

The men in the dining room were, meanwhile, storming the buffet.

"Where do you get your everlasting humor, Glas?" asked Razowiec, who, although he was the gloomiest actor in the company, played the parts of the merriest rakes and the funniest uncles.

"That is a public secret. I do not worry, and I have a good digestion," answered Glas.

"You have precisely that which I am lacking. . . . Do you know I tried the recipe which you recommended, but got no results . . . nothing will help me any more. I feel certain that I shall not outlive this winter for if my stomach does not pain me it is my back, if it isn't my back then it's my heart, or else this dreadful pain passes into my neck and racks my spine as with an iron rod."

"Imagination! Drink a cognac to me. . . . Don't think of your illness and you'll be well."

"You laugh, but I tell you truly that I can no longer sleep for whole nights at a time . . . ."

"Imagination, I tell you! Drink a cognac to me!"

"It is easy for those who have never suffered to ridicule."

"I have suffered, my God, I have suffered. . . Drink a cognac to me! I once ate in the restaurant 'Under the Star' such a cutlet that I lay in bed a whole week after it and writhed like an eel with pain."

They retired to the further end of the buffet near the window and continued their conversation. The one complained and lamented, the other ceaselessly laughed, saying every minute, "Drink a cognac to me!"

"Maurice," called Majkowska in a whisper, lifting the portieres.

Topolski bent over toward her and she murmured into his ear: "I love you! . . . do you know? . . ." and she passed on, conversing with Janina.

Throughout the salon formed small groups of people conversing.

Cabinski kept running about continually, inviting the guests to drink, pouring out the liquors for them, and kissing everybody.

Pepa sat in the salon with the editor and Kotlicki, who was one of the steady patrons of the theater. She was relating something in a lively and jovial tone, for the editor would every now and then burst out in a discreet laugh, while Kotlicki would contort into a smile, his long equine face, and gather about him his coat-tails. All that was known about him was that he was rich and ennuied.

Kotlicki listened patiently enough, but, at last, bending toward Cabinska, he asked in a wooden, expressionless voice, "When does the culminating act of to-day's performance begin—the supper?"

"Immediately . . . we are waiting only for the owner of the house to arrive."

"No doubt the rent for the last quarter must be unpaid, if you show her so much consideration," he whispered ironically.

"You always see everything in the worst light!" she answered, throwing a flower at him.

"To-day I merely see that the directress is fascinating, that Majkowska has the mien of a lioness, and that the lady who is walking with her . . . but who is she?"

"A newly engaged chorus girl."

"Well, I see that yonder aspirant to the dramatic art is beautiful by virtue of her originality and alone possesses more distinction than all the rest of them taken together. Furthermore, I see that Mimi to-day resembles a freshly baked roll, white and round and rosy; that Rosinska has the face of a black poodle who has fallen into a bin of flour and not yet succeeded in shaking it off, and that her Sophie looks like a freshly washed and combed little greyhound. Kaczkowska looks like a frying pan covered with melted butter; Mrs. Piesh like a hen seeking her strayed chicks; and Mrs. Glas like a calf enveloped in a rainbow. Where the dickens did she get all those colors she wears?"

"You are a merciless mocker!"

"You can make me relent, Directress, by hurrying the supper . . ." he answered and became silent.

The directress began telling in detail about a new joke that Majkowska had played on Topolski. Kotlicki, listening to it, frowned impatiently.

"It is too bad that there is not a law which would compel you ladies to pierce your tongues instead of your ears," he said derisively, enveloping himself in a cloud of cigar smoke and observing Janina who was still promenading with Majkowska.

Both beamed with satisfaction, realizing the attention they attracted. Janina's eyes were joyous, and her crimson lips smiled charmingly revealing her pearly teeth.

Wladek was engaged in some lengthy conversation with his mother and also followed Janina with his eyes. Meeting the glances of Kotlicki he turned away.

Shortly they were joined by Sophie Rosinska, a fourteen-year old typical actor's child with the long, thin mouth of a greyhound, a pale complexion, and the large eyes of a madonna. Her short, curled hair shook with every motion of her head and her thin, narrow lips fairly bit with their spitefulness as she related something to Majkowska in her lively voice.

"Sophie!" energetically called Mrs. Rosinska.

Sophie left them and sat down beside her mother, gloomy and sulky.

"I constantly keep telling you not to have anything to do with Majkowska!" whispered Rosinska, adjusting the curls on her daughter's head.

"Don't bother me with your nonsense. Mamma! . . . I'm sick and tired of listening to it! I like Miss Mela because she isn't a scarecrow like those others," saucily prattled Sophie and smiled with childish naivete at Niedzielska, who was looking at her.

"Wait till we get home. I'll fix you!"

"All right, all right . . . we'll see about that, Mother!"

Mrs. Rosinska turned to Stanislawski, who sat beside her all the while and chatted without drinking anything. She began to make remarks about Majkowska, with whom she was always on a war footing, for they had almost the same repertory and Majkowska had, in addition, talent, youth, and beauty, none of which Rosinska possessed. Rosinska hated all young women, for in each she now saw a rival and a thief stealing her roles and her favor with the public.

Lately she had become intimate with Stanislawski for she felt that something similar was happening to him. He never spoke to her about it, nor ever complained, but now, when he bent toward her his thin, waxen face all seamed with wrinkles as fine as hairs, his yellowish eyes glowed gloomily.

"Did you notice how Cabinska played to-day?" she asked him.

"Did I notice?" answered Stanislawski, "I see that every day. I know long ago what they are . . . long ago! What is Cabinski himself? . . . A clown and tightrope walker who in our days would not even have been permitted to play the part of a lackey! . . . And Wladek! he's an artist, is he? . . . A beast who makes a public house of the stage! . . . He plays only for his mistresses! His noblemen are shoemakers and barbers, while his barbers and shoemakers are loafers from the water front . . . What do they introduce on the stage? . . . Hooligans, the street, slang and mud. . . . And what is Glas? . . . A drunkard in life, which is a minor consideration, but it is not permissible for a true artist to wander about taverns with the most disgusting hoodlums; it is not permissible for a true artist to introduce on the stage the hiccoughs of a drunkard and vulgar brutality. . . . Take Ziolkowski's The Master and the Apprentice for instance: there you have a type, a finished type of a drunkard presented in broad and classical outlines; there is gesture and pose and mimicry, but there is also nobility. What does Glas make of that role? . . . He makes a filthy, repulsive, drunken shoemaker of the lowest order. That is their art! . . . And Piesh? . . . Piesh is also not much better, although he bears the stamp of a good artist . . . but his acting is a miserable and an everlasting botch; he has a humor on the stage, like that of fighting dogs, but not human and noble . . . and not ours! . . ."

He became silent a moment and rubbed his eyes with his long skinny hand with thin, knotty fingers.

"And Krzykiewicz? . . . and Wawrzecki? . . . and Razowiec? . . . perhaps they are artists, eh? . . . Artists! . . . Do you remember Kalacinski? . . . He was an artist! Or Krzensinski, Stobinski, Felek, and Chelchowski? . . . Those were artists who could bring down the house! . . . What are our actors compared with them? . . ." he asked encompassing with an inimical glance the company about them. "What is this band of shoemakers, tailors, paper hangers, barbers? . . . Comedians, ragamuffins, and clowns! . . . Bah! art is going to the dogs. In a few more years when we are gone, they will make of the stage a barroom, a circus, or a storage warehouse.

"Do you hear? . . . they give me half-sheet roles of old men and old nincompoops, to me! . . . do you hear? . . . to me, who for forty years have upheld the entire classical repertory to me! Oh! oh!" he hissed quietly tearing his finger nails convulsively.

"Topolski! . . . Topolski alone has a talent, but what does he do with it? . . . A bandit, a Singalese, who goes into epileptic fits on the stage, who is ready to put a barn on the stage if those new authors require it. They call that realism, while in truth it is nothing but roguery! . . ."

"And the women? . . . you forget the women, sir! . . . Who plays the parts of sweethearts and heroines? . . . Who is in the chorus? . . . scrub-women and barmaids, who have made of the theater a screen for their licentiousness. But that's nothing . . . the directors want that; what do they care if these women possess neither talent, intelligence nor beauty! . . . They give them the most important roles. They act the parts of heroines and look like chambermaids or like those who walk the streets! . . . But what do the directors care as long as the business keeps going and the box office is sold out . . . that's all they care about!" She spoke rapidly and the blood rushed to her face so violently that she became all red, in spite of the thick layer of powder and cream.

The stage-director, who was once the celebrated hero of a few theaters, and old Mirowska who was still retained only as a favor because of her old age and brilliant past completed the camp of the veterans of the old actors' guard, who had fought in other times, and looked upon the present with gloomy eyes. They stood beneath the bridge of a sinking ship, hence no one even heard their cries of despair.

Kotlicki beckoned to Wladek and made room for him beside himself.

Wladek in passing Janina cast a glance of fiery passion at her, and then sat down near Kotlicki, rubbing his knee which bothered him whenever he sat for any length of time.

"Rheumatism is already there, eh? . . . while fame and money are still far away! . . ." Kotlicki began mockingly.

"Oh, the deuce take fame! . . . Money I wouldn't mind having . . ."

"Do you think you will ever get it?"

"I will . . . my faith in that is unfailing! At times it seems to me as though I already felt it in my pocket."

"That's true. Your mother owns a house."

"And six children and a pile of debts as high as the chimney! . . . No, not that! . . . I will get the money elsewhere . . ."

"In the meanwhile, according to your old custom you borrow it wherever you can, eh?" Kotlicki mocked on.

"Oh, don't fear. I'll return yours this month yet, without fail."

"I will wait even until the reappearance of the comet of 1812; it will pass this way again in about a year. . . ."

"Don't mock me. . . . You'd not hurt people as much with a club as you do with your cynicism."

"That's my weapon!" answered Kotlicki, contracting his brows.

"Perhaps, before long, I shall marry and then I will pay up all my debts. . . ."

Kotlicki turned violently towards him, glanced straight into his eyes and began to laugh with his quiet, neighing voice, screwing his face into a grimace.

"That is the finest piece of invention that I have ever heard!"

"No, I seriously intend to marry and have already selected something: a brownstone house and a girl of twenty, a light blonde, plump, graceful and resolute. . . . If my mother helps me, I shall marry before this season is over."

"And what of the theater?"

"I will organize a company of my own."

Kotlicki laughed again.

"Your mother is too sensible and I am sure that she will not let herself be caught on that hook, my dear! . . . Why are you ogling that beauty in the cream-colored dress so persistently, eh?"

"Oh she's a cocoanut of a woman!"

"Yes, but that cocoanut is too hard for your weak teeth. You won't crack it, and you're likely to lose a tooth in trying. . . ."

"Do you know what the savages do? . . . When they haven't a knife or a stone handy, they light a fire, put the cocoanut in it, and the heat bursts it open . . ."

"And when there is no fire to be had, what then? . . . You don't answer me, my clever chap? . . . Then I'll tell you: when there is no fire to be had, they content themselves with gazing on the cocoanut, consoling themselves with the thought that someone else will show them how to do it."

Their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of the owner of the house. A confused murmur arose from those assembled. Cabinska went forward to greet her with extended hand and the mien of resplendent majesty.

"It is a pleasure to meet you! . . a real pleasure!" she announced with a faint smile, condescendingly extending her hand to the persons whom Cabinska introduced to her. She sought to appear coldly indifferent, while in reality she had been dying from curiosity ever since the morning to view these noted women about whom she had heard so much.

Cabinski approached her smiling, with wine and cakes in his hand, but Pepa was already inviting all to sit down to supper.

The landlady excused herself for being late, but her thin voice was drowned amid the hubbub of the guests seating themselves at the table. She was given an honorary place between Pepa, Majkowska, and the editor. Kotlicki seated himself at the end of the table alongside of Janina, while Wladek wedged himself in between Janina and Zielinska.

After a toast pronounced by the editor in honor of the celebrant, conversation burst forth like a cascade and with unrestrained flow filled the entire room. All began to talk at the same time, to laugh and to joke. Inebriation began to envelop all brains in a rosy mist of merriment and to weave joy around all hearts.

In the middle of the supper the doorbell rang violently.

"Who can that be?" asked Cabinska. "Nurse, go and open the door!"

The nurse was busy about a side table where the children were eating; she went immediately to open the door.

"Who came?" inquired Cabinska.

"Oh, nobody! Only that unchristened little goldfish!" she answered scornfully.

Those sitting nearest burst out laughing.

"Ah, yes. Our dear and invaluable Gold!"

Gold entered and bowed to the company, tugging at his sparse, yellow little beard.

"How are you, goldfish?"

"Hey there, Treasurer! Oh pearl of treasurers, come over to us."

The treasurer bowed, paying no attention to the jibes that were hurled at him.

"Mrs. Directress will pardon me for coming late, but my family lives in the Jewish quarter and I really had to stay with them till the end of the Sabbath," he explained to Cabinska.

"Have a seat, sir. If you can't eat, you're at least allowed to drink," invited Cabinski, making room for Gold alongside himself.

Gold located himself carefully and began to eat. When the company had forgotten him a bit, he ventured to address them:

"I have brought you the latest news, for I see no one knows it, as yet. . . ."

He took a newspaper from his side pocket and began to read aloud: "Miss Snilowska, the noted and talented artist of the provincial theaters, playing under the pseudonym of 'Nicolette' has received permission to make her debut in the Warsaw Theater. She will make her first appearance next Tuesday in Sardou's Odette. We hope that the management, in engaging Miss Snilowska, has added a very valuable acquisition to the stage."

He folded away the paper and calmly continued to eat. The company was struck dumb with amazement.

"Nicolette on the Warsaw stage! . . . Nicolette making her debut! . . . Nicolette! . . ." they whispered with subdued voices.

Everybody began to look at Majkowska and Pepa, but both were silent.

Majkowska's face wore a scornful expression while Pepa, unable to conceal the anger that raged within her, tore distractedly at the lace on her sleeves.

"No doubt she is now blessing that intrigue that caused her to leave us, for it helped instead of harming her," said someone.

"Or else it was her talent that helped her!" intentionally added Kotlicki.

"Talent?" cried Cabinska, "Nicolette and talent! Ha! ha! ha! Why she could not even play a chambermaid on our stage!"

"Nevertheless in the Warsaw Theater she will play the second-best roles," interposed Kotlicki.

"The Warsaw Theater! The Warsaw Theater! That is a still poorer show than ours!" added Glas.

"Ho! ho! what do the Warsaw Theater and its actors amount to! . . . Nothing great, to be sure!" shouted Krzykiewicz, all flushed with drinking as he filled the landlady's glass with wine.

"Only pay us such salaries as their actors get, and you will see who we are!" called Piesh.

"That's true! Piesh is right. Who can think only of art when his rent is in arrears?"

"That's a falsehood! That would mean that you could make an artist of any swineherd whom you fed," called Stanislawski across the table.

"Poverty is a fire that burns rubbish, but the true metal only comes out of it all the purer," quickly said Topolski.

"Nonsense! It comes out not purer, but only more sooty, and afterwards the rust devours it all the more quickly. A bottle is worth something not because it may have once contained the choicest Tokay, but because it's now full of brandy!" stammered Glas in a drunken voice.

"The Warsaw Theater! My God! with the exception of two or three persons it's full of the scum of the profession which the provinces no longer could stand."

"Just let the press give us the support it gives them, let it insert half a column daily about us and round up the public for us each day as it does for them! . . ."

"Well, what then? . . . Even at that you'd remain nothing but Wawrzecki!" sneered Kotlicki.

"Yes, but the public would come and see that Wawrzecki is not a bit worse and perhaps a great deal better actor than those patented celebrities."

"Let me speak!" whimpered Glas, vainly trying to rise from his chair and steady himself.

"The public! . . . the public is a flock of sheep which runs where it is driven by the shepherds."

"Don't say that, Topolski . . ."

"Don't try to deny it, Kotlicki! I tell you that the public is a pack of fools, but its leaders are even greater fools!"

"Let me speak," mumbled Glas in a voice that was already growing inaudible, while he leaned on the table and gazed at the candles with hazy eyes.

"Glas, go to sleep, for you're drunk," said Topolski sharply.

"I am drunk? . . . I am drunk? . . ." stuttered Glas, his face as ruddy as the dawn.

The wine and liquors circulated more freely, and the guests began shifting their seats.

Wladek seated himself between Majkowska and the landlady, embarking on a flirtation with the latter. Mimi, growing exhilarated, approached Kaczkowska, with whom she had already exchanged glances and friendly words across the table. They now sat close together, holding each other about the waist like the sincerest friends.

Janina, who had been answering Kotlicki only in brief sentences, preoccupied with what she saw and heard about her glanced at him with an amazed and questioning look.

"You are surprised?" he asked.

"Yes, for not so long ago they were so angry at one another."

"Bosh! that was only a little comedy, played fairly well in their momentary mood . . ."

"A comedy? . . . and I thought that . . ."

"That they would begin to pull each other's hair, no doubt . . . for even that sometimes happens behind the stage between the best of friends and actors. From what planet have you dropped down that these people surprise you so greatly? . . ."

"I came from the country where one hears hardly anything about artists, only about the theater itself," she answered straightforwardly.

"Ah, in that case, I beg your pardon. . . . Now I understand your amazement and I will presume to enlighten you that all those quarrels, rumpuses, intrigues, envies, and even fights are nothing but nerves, nerves, nerves! They vibrate in all of these people at the slightest touch, like the strings of an old piano. Their tears, their angers, and their hatreds are all momentary, and their loves last about a week, at the longest. It is the comedy of life of nervous individuals, acted a hundredfold better than that which they present on the stage, for it is played instinctively. I might describe it thus: all women in the theater are hysterical, and the men, whether great or small, are neurasthenics. Here you will find everything but real human beings. Have you been long in the theater?"

"This is my first month."

"No wonder that everything amazes you; but in a month or so you'll no longer see anything surprising; everything will then appear to you natural and commonplace."

"In other words, you infer that I also will become a subject to hysteria," she gaily added.

"Yes. I give you my word that I am speaking with absolute sincerity. You think you can live with impunity in this environment without becoming like all the rest of them; while I tell you that that is a natural necessity. Suppose we expatiate on that a bit . . . will you allow me?"

"Certainly."

"In the country you must know the woods. . . . Now please recall to your mind the woodsmen. Have they not in themselves something of that wood which they are continually chopping? They become stiff and stalwart, gloomy and indifferent. And what of the butcher? Does not a man who is continually occupied in killing, who breathes in the odor of raw meat and steaming blood, in time become stamped with the same characteristics as those beasts which he has slain? He does, and I would say that he is himself a beast. And what of the peasant? Do you know the village well?"

Janina nodded.

"Imagine for a moment the green fields in springtime, golden in the summer, russet-gray and mournful in the autumn, white and hard like a desert in the winter. Now behold the peasant as he is from his birth until his death . . . the average, normal peasant. The peasant boy is like a wild, unbridled colt, like the irresistible urge of the spring. In the prime of his manhood he is like the summer, a physical potentate, hard as the earth baked by the July sun, gray as his fallows and pastures, slow as the ripening of the grain. Autumn corresponds entirely to the old age of the peasant that desperate, ugly old age with its bleared eyes and earthy complexion, like the ground beneath the plow; it lacks strength and goes about in beggars' garments like the earth that has been reft of the bulk of its fruits with only a few dried and yellow stalks sticking out here and there in the potato fields; the peasant is already slowly returning to the earth from whence he sprung, the earth which itself becomes dumb and silent after the harvest and lies there in the pale autumn sunlight, quiet, passive, and drowsy. . . . Afterwards comes winter: the peasant in his white coffin, in his new boots and clean shirt, lies down to rest in that earth which has, like him, arrayed itself in a white shroud of snow and fallen to sleep that earth whose life he was a part of, which he unconsciously loved, and with which he dies together, as cold and hard as those ice-covered furrows that nourished him. . . ."

Kotlicki meditated a moment and then continued: "And yet you think that you can remain in the theater without becoming a hysterical type? That's impossible! This phantom life, this daily portrayal of new characters, feelings and thoughts upon that shifting plane of impressions, amid artificial stimulants this must metamorphose every human being, demolish his former personality and recast or rather disintegrate his soul so that you can put almost any stamp upon it. You must become a chameleon; on the stage, for art's sake, in life, from necessity."

"In other words, one must degenerate to become an artist," added Janina.

"Well, what of that? . . . Even though you fall, others will surely reach the goal and convince themselves that it wasn't worth reaching that it isn't worth striving for, nor shedding a single tear, nor bearing a single pang . . . for everything is illusion, illusion, illusion . . . ."

They became silent. Janina felt a sudden chill depression. That former fear of the unknown, experienced at Bukowiec, now took possession of her.

Kotlicki leaned with one elbow on the table and looked absently into the crystal carafes containing the arrack. He poured out and drank glass after glass. The conversation with Janina had wearied him; he continued to speak to her, but felt vexed at himself for having said so much. His yellow face, covered with freckles and short reddish hair, hard and seamed with deep lines, resembled a horse's face as it was reflected in the red glass of the carafe.

Gazing at Janina he saw so much strength and inner health, so many desires, dreams, and hopes, that he muttered to himself in a hollow, dissatisfied tone: "What for? . . . What for? . . ."

Then he gulped down another glass of wine and became absorbed in the general conversation. Voices sounded harshly, faces were red, and eyes glowed through a mist of alcoholic intoxication, while many lips were already mumbling indistinctly and incoherently. All were talking at once, arguing heatedly and quarreling volubly, unceremoniously swearing, shouting or laughing.

The candles, almost burnt out, were replaced by new ones. Gray dawn, filtering in through the reed shades in thin streaks, dimmed the glare of the lights.

The guests rose from the table and scattered about the adjoining rooms. Cabinska, followed by a few ladies, repaired to the boudoir for tea. In the first room a few tables were arranged and a game of cards commenced.

Only Gold still sat at the festal board and ate, relating something to Glas, who was now quite drunk.

"They are poor people. . . . My sister is a widow with six children; I help her as much as I can, but that doesn't amount to much. . . . And, in the meanwhile, the children are growing up and need ever more . . ." Gold was saying.

"Then cheat us more, you dog's face! . . ."

"The elder is about to take up a medical course, the next in age is a store clerk and the rest of them are such small and weak and sickly tots that it pains one to look at them!"

"Then drown them, like puppies! . . . Drown them and be done with it!" mumbled Glas.

"You are very drunk . . ." whispered Gold scornfully, "you have no idea what children are! . . ."

"Get married and you'll have kids of your own . . ." stuttered Glas.

"I can't . . . I must first see that these are provided for," replied Gold quietly grasping a cup of tea in both hands and sipping it in little gulps, "I must first make men of them . . ." he added, his eyes glowing.

All around there was a hum of voices as in a beehive when the swarm of young bees is ready to fly out into the world. The hidden desires, envies, feuds, and troubles broke out irresistibly. The talking grew louder, people were denounced without pardon, slandered without mercy, reviled and derided without pity. Those assembled there had now become their natural selves: no one masked himself any longer nor confined himself within the bounds of one role. All played a thousand different roles. The hidden comedy of souls now found its stage, its audience, and its actors, often very talented ones.

Janina exhilarated by the wine, conversed with Wawrzecki about the theater. Afterwards she strayed about the rooms, watched the men playing cards, and listened to a variety of conversations and arguments.

Janina roused herself from her meditations, for Kotlicki stood before her with a cup of tea in his hand and with his sharp ennuied voice began to speak: "You are observing the company, mademoiselle? Truly, what remarkable energy there is in all their actions, what strong souls they now appear to be!"

"Your malice also has strength . . ." she replied slowly.

"And is wasted on slander and ridicule, you wished to add, didn't you?"

"Almost so."

"We shall see, we shall see . . ." he said slowly, standing his cup upon the table and then, taking leave of Janina he left quietly.

In the anteroom where the sleepy Wicek handed him his overcoat, he heard the monotonous whispering of the children's voices behind the screen. He raised the curtain and saw Cabinski's four little boys kneeling in their nightgowns and repeating their prayers after the nurse.

A small night-lamp, glowing before a holy picture above the nurse's bed, faintly illumined that group of children and the old, gray-haired woman, who humbly bowed to the ground, struck her breast with her hand and whispered in a tearful voice: "O Lamb of God, who purgest the sins of the world!"

The children repeated the words after her with drowsy voices and beat their breasts with their little hands.

Kotlicki withdrew quietly and without a smile. Only when he had reached the stairs, he whispered: "Well, well! We shall see, we shall see. . . ."

Janina started for the boudoir, but Niedzielska stopped her and drew her into a conversation; later Wladek joined them.

The company began to break up.

"Do you live far away?" Niedzielska asked Janina.

"On Podwal Street, but in a week at most I am moving to Widok Street."

"Ah, that's good, for we live on Piwna Street, so we can go together. . . ."

They left immediately. Niedzielska took Janina by the arm, while Wladek walked alongside, a little angry because he had to accompany his mother; he swore to himself, while aloud he made melancholy remarks about the weather.

The streets were deserted and silent. Dawn was already illumining the dark depths of the horizon and the outlines of the houses became distinct. The gas lamps extended like an endless golden chain with their links of pale flames diffusing a mist of light upon the dew covered sidewalks and the gray walls of the houses. The fresh brisk breeze of a July morning swept down the streets with a strange charm and tranquility. The houses stood silent, still wrapt in slumber.

Arrived at her hotel Niedzielska kissed Janina with a sudden friendliness and they parted.



CHAPTER VI

"Will you find it comfortable here?"

"I think so. It is quiet and light. . . . Who lived here before me?"

"Miss Nicolette. She is now at the Warsaw Theater . . . That's a good omen."

"No, not entirely. They are likely not to engage her. . . ."

"Oh, they'll engage her all right. . . . Miss Zarnecka is clever," said Mme. Anna, the daughter of Sowinska into whose home Janina had just moved.

She was twenty-four years old, neither homely nor pretty with an indefinite color of hair and eyes, but with a very definite slenderness and bad temper.

She conducted a dressmaking establishment under the name of Mme. Anna and although she made her living on actresses and very often received free tickets to the theater, she never went there and hated artists. There were often scenes over this with her mother, but old Sowinska, would not so much as listen to any suggestion that she should abandon the theater. She had become so deeply rooted there that she could not tear herself away, although Mme. Anna would turn almost yellow from shame over the fact that her mother was a theatrical seamstress. She was disgustingly stingy, ignorant, pitiless, and jealous.

Mme. Anna examined Janina's wardrobe with ill-concealed malice.

"All that will have to be made over, for it smells of the country," she decreed.

Janina began to protest a little, maintaining that the same styles could often be seen in the streets.

"Yes, but who wears them, please take notice of that: shop women or shoemakers' wives; a self-respecting woman will not wear such rags!" Mme. Anna scornfully persisted.

"Well then, have them made over. I can pay you immediately for the work and also a full month's rent in advance."

"Oh, there's no hurry. You'll need to buy a few costumes."

"I'll have enough left for that."

Janina paid thirty rubles for her room.

"I am already settled for good," she later said to the old woman who dropped in to see her.

"Bosh, it won't be for long! In two months you'll be moving again. An actor's life is a gypsy life, from wagon to wagon, from town to town. . . ."

"Perhaps at some time I'll be able to settle down permanently," said Janina.

Sowinska smiled gloomily. "That is the way one thinks in the beginning, but afterwards . . . afterwards it ends in eternal wandering. . . . You become worn-out like a rag and die on a hotel bed."

"Not all end in that way," answered Janina gaily, paying little attention.

"What are you laughing at? . . . It's not at all funny!" cried Sowinska.

"Am I laughing? . . . I merely said that not all end in that way."

"All ought to end in that way, every one of them!" Sowinska shouted angrily and left.

Janina could not understand either her violent anger, or her last words.

The days sped on. Janina absorbed the theater into herself ever more deeply. She attended the rehearsals regularly, afterwards went to give lessons for two hours to Cabinska's daughter, and later would go home for dinner, prepare her wardrobe for the performance, and at about eight in the evening start off again for the theater.

On the days when no operettas were played and the choruses were free, she went to the Summer Theater and there, squeezed high up in the gallery, spent entire evenings dreaming. She devoured with her eyes the actresses, their gestures, costumes, mimicry, and voices. She followed the action of the plays so closely that later she could re-create them in her mind with detailed accuracy and often, after returning from the theater, she would light the candles, stand before the large mirror, and repeat the acting which she had seen, observing intently every quiver of her facial expression and trying out every conceivable pose. But she was seldom satisfied with herself.

The plays which she saw left her cold and bored. She was not stirred by the bourgeois dramas with their eternal conventional conflicts and flirtations. She repeated the banal lines of these plays apathetically and in the midst of some scene would stop and go to bed.

She asked Cabinski to give her a role in the cast of a new play, but he put her off with nothing.

"I am keeping you in mind, but first you must familiarize yourself with the stage. . . . When we present some melodrama or folk play you will get a bigger role . . ." was all he said.

In the meanwhile they were playing only operettas, for they filled the theater.

Janina smiled in reply to Cabinski's vague promises, although torn by impatience. But she had already learned to control her feelings and to wear a mask of smiling indifference. She consoled herself with the thought that sooner or later she would have done with the chorus and that the moment must at last arrive when she would appear in a real role.

She had already become saturated with the atmosphere in which she lived. And that public, so strange and capricious, which some accused of ignorance, of a total lack of taste and higher desires, and others of indifference, but to which all paid homage and before which they all cringed and trembled, begging its favors that public even filled Janina with anger. There was something strange in her attitude. She would dress very fastidiously for the stage, merely for the purpose of attracting attention to herself; she would adopt the most graceful poses, but whenever she felt the gaze of the multitude it would send a depressing shudder through her.

"Shoemakers!" she would whisper scornfully, thereafter remaining in the shadow.

In the dressing-room chorus girls passively submitted to Janina, for they feared her, knowing that she had intimate and continual relations with the management. They were likewise impressed by the fact that Wladek followed her continually and that Kotlicki, who formerly used to come behind the scenes only occasionally, now sat there daily throughout the whole performance and conversed with Janina with his hat off. She was surrounded by a sort of invisible aura of unconscious respect, for although many surmises were made about her on account of Kotlicki, no one ever dared insinuate anything to her face.

At first, Janina inclined toward the leading actresses of the company and wanted to enter upon a more intimate acquaintance with them, but they discouraged her, for whenever she began to speak to them about the theater or about art, they would become silent, or else commence to tell her about their own triumphs.

Stanislawski and the stage-director were Janina's sincere friends. Many times during the rehearsals they would go upstairs to the deserted dressing-rooms or to the storeroom under the stage, and there tell stories of the theater and the actors of their day an epoch that was already dead. They would conjure up before her eyes great figures, great souls, and great passions almost like those she had dreamed of.

How much advice they gave her concerning enunciations, classical pose, and the best manner of reciting her lines! She listened with interest, but when she tried to play the fragment of some role according to their instructions, she found she could not do it, and they would then appear so stiff, pathetic and unnatural that she began to treat them with an indulgent pity.

With Mme. Anna, Janina lived on a footing of cool politeness. With Sowinska she was a little more intimate, for the old woman fawned upon her as a tenant who regularly paid her rent in advance. Sowinska was coarse and violent. There were certain days that she would eat nothing, nor even go to the theater, but would sit locked in her room, crying, or at moments swearing extraordinarily.

After such days she seemed even more energetic and would indulge with greater zest in behind-the-stage intrigues. She would walk among the audience and speak quietly with the young men who hung about the theater. She would bring the actresses invitations to suppers, bouquets, candy, and letters and would seek with a genuine zeal to induce the stubborn ones to yield to the advances made to them. She accompanied the girls as a chaperon to carousals and knew just when to find an important reason for leaving. At such times there would gleam under her mask of kindhearted and wrinkled old age an expression of cruel glee.

Janina overheard once how the old woman spoke to Shepska, who had joined the theater after being seduced by a member of the chorus.

"Listen to me, madame! . . . What does your lover give you? A home on Brewery Street and sardines with tea for breakfast, dinner and supper. . . . It's a shame to waste yourself on such a poor fool! Don't you know that you could live as comfortably as you wish and laugh at Cabinski! Why should you have scruples! . . . A person profits by life only as he enjoys it! . . . A young and pretty girl ought not waste herself on a penniless nobody. . . . Perhaps you think you will the sooner get a role by remaining where you are? . . . Oho! when pears grow on a pine tree! Only those are given roles who have someone backing them."

Usually she accomplished her purpose, and though often offered costly presents, seldom accepted anything.

"I don't want them. If I advise anyone, it's because I wish them well," she would answer briefly.

Janina who had learned enough of the more intimate phases of life behind the scenes, regarded Sowinska with a certain awe. She knew that it was not for gain that the old woman shoved the younger ones into the mire of degradation, but for some hidden reason. At times, she feared her, unable to endure the enigmatic look with which Sowinska scrutinized her face. She felt instinctively that Sowinska seemed to be waiting for something or watching for some opportunity.

On one of those lachrymose days of Sowinska's Janina, who was just starting for the theater, dropped in to see her.

Entering the room she stood amazed. Sowinska was kneeling beside an open trunk, while on the bed, the table and the chairs were spread the parts of some theatrical costume and on the floor were lying stacks of faded copies of roles. Sowinska was holding in her hand the photograph of a young man with a strange face, long and so thin that all the cheek bones could be seen distinctly protruding through the skin. He had an abnormally high forehead with wide temples and a huge head. Large eyes gazed out of the pale face like the sunken hollows in a dead man's skull.

Sowinska turned to the girl with the photograph in her hands and in a voice trembling with anguish, whispered: "Look, this is my son . . . and these are my sacred relics!"

"Was he an artist?"

"An artist? . . . I should say so, but not like those monkeys of Cabinski's. How he played! The papers wrote about him. He was in Plock and I went to see him. When he appeared in The Robbers the whole theater shook with applause and cries of admiration. I sat behind the scenes and when I heard his voice and saw him I was so overcome with emotion that I thought I would die for very joy!

"I loved him so dearly that I would have let myself be torn to shreds for him! . . . He was an artist, an artist! He never owned a penny and poverty often devoured him like a dog, but I tried to help him as much as I could. I slaved for him and lived on nothing but tea and bread to save something for him."

She ceased speaking while tears flowed softly down her faded, pale face.

Janina, after a long silence, asked quietly: "Where is your son now?"

"Where?" she answered, rising from the floor. "Where? . . . He is dead! He shot himself."

She began to breathe heavily.

"My whole life has been like that!" she began again. "His father was a tailor and I kept a shop. In the beginning all went well for we had plenty of money and a decent home. My husband worked for a circus and shortly a performer caught his eye and he followed her into the world when the circus moved on."

She sighed heavily.

"I merely set my teeth tightly together. I toiled like a galley slave to gain a mere living for myself and daughter, but I was stricken by an epidemic. When I came out of it, everything went to the dogs, for my shop was sold to cover my debts. I was practically turned out into the street without a penny. An unspeakable rage seized me. I borrowed money wherever I could and together with my child went to seek my husband. I found him living with a shopkeeper in such comfort that he had forgotten all about us. I took him by the neck and brought him back with us to Warsaw. . . . He staid with me a whole year, bestowed another child upon me, and ran away again. My daughter grew up, we took home sewing, and managed to make a living somehow.

"Then after some years they brought back my husband stone-blind. I gave him a nook in my home, for my children desired it. God was at least merciful enough to take him away.

"Later, I married off my daughter to a peasant. One day about two years ago, I was present at my daughter's name day party to which a few relatives and friends had been invited. In the midst of it they brought me a telegram from Suwalki asking me to come immediately, for my son was very ill."

She paused for a moment, gazed blankly about the room and in a low voice, filled with despair whispered on, lifting her pale face to Janina's:

"He was already dead. . . . They were waiting for me to bury him. . . ."

"Later they told me that he had fallen in love with a chorus girl and killed himself for her! They showed her to me. She was the vilest sort. And that was why he killed himself . . . .

"When I caught her in the street, I would have killed her, killed her like a mad dog to avenge my wrong and anguish! . . ." Sowinska shouted aloud, clenching her fists.

"Such is my life, such! I curse it every day, but cannot forget . . . all that still burns here in my bosom . . . I am in the theater, for it always seems to me that he will return, that he is already dressing and will immediately appear on the stage . . ."

"My God, God! . . . Ah, it was not he that was to blame, but she . . . you girls tear to pieces a mother's heart . . . I would trample you all underfoot like so many worms, into the mud, into poverty, so that you might agonize as I do . . . so that you might suffer, suffer, suffer. . . ."

She ceased, breathing heavily. Her yellow waxen face glared with wild hatred. Her wrinkles twitched and her pale bitten lips seethed.

Janina had been standing all the while eagerly absorbing her every word and gesture. The overwhelming reality of Sowinska's grief, so simple and strong, had called forth a responsive chord in her own heart.

She was standing in the street, wondering where she should go, when a voice behind her said: "Good morning, Miss Orlowska!"

She turned about quickly. Mrs. Niedzielska, Wladek's mother, was standing before her with a smile on her aged, simple face.

Janina greeted her hastily.

"I was about to take a walk," she said.

"Perhaps you will drop into my house for a minute? . . ." begged Niedzielska quietly. "I am so much alone that often for whole days I don't see anyone except Anna and the janitor."

She hobbled slowly along.

"Certainly, I still have a little time before the performance," answered Janina.

"You're not in the theater very long, are you?"

"Only three weeks."

"I could tell that right away!"

"How?"

"I can't exactly explain. I watched you at Cabinska's party and immediately knew that you were a newcomer. I even mentioned it to Wladek . . ."

"Please make yourself at home. . . . I'll be with you in a minute." Niedzielska played hostess quite grandly, once they were arrived at her home.

Janina, left alone, observed with curiosity the old-fashioned mahogany table covered with an embroidered net doily which stood before a huge lounge upholstered with black horsehair; the chairs, upholstered with the same material, had lyre-shaped backs. A yellow polished dresser was filled with grotesque porcelain, greenish pitchers, colored bric-a-brac, wineglasses with monograms, and flower-painted teacups standing on high legs. A clock under a bell glass, old, faded steel engravings of the Empire period, a lamp with a green shade on a separate table, a few pots with miserable flowers on the window sill and two cages with canaries constituted the entire furnishings.

"Let us have a drink of coffee . . ." said Niedzielska, reentering.

She took from the dresser two showy cups and placed them on the table. Then she went to the kitchen and brought in the coffee, already poured into two chipped bowls, and a plate with a few stale cakes.

"O goodness, I forgot that I had already set the cups on the table . . . well, it doesn't matter. We can drink the coffee just as well out of these, can't we? . . ." she said, at once adding, "dear me, I forgot the sugar! Do you like your coffee sweet, mademoiselle?"

The old woman left the room and through the door Janina could hear her taking sugar out of a glass bowl. She brought in on a little saucer two lumps.

"Please have some in your coffee. . . . You see at my age I can't have anything sweet," she said, drinking audibly.

Finally, after perhaps half an hour, in which her hostess chattered interminably and Janina listened with increasing weariness, the girl got up to go, and at the very door she met Wladek.

"Visiting my mother!" he exclaimed.

"Certainly. There's nothing wrong in that," she answered, smiling at his confusion.

"Heavens! No doubt she's been telling you what a scoundrel I am. I beg your pardon for having had to listen."

"Oh, it didn't offend me in the least."

"It only made you laugh, I know. The whole theater is laughing at my expense, for all the ladies have already been here."

"Your mother loves you," Janina spoke seriously.

"That love is beginning to choke me like a bone in my throat!" he answered sourly and wanted to add something else, but Janina bowed silently and passed on.

Wladek did not have the courage to follow her and went upstairs.

"What is happening in my own home?" she thought as she walked toward the theater. "What is my father doing? . . ."

And she suddenly felt within herself a glimmer of sympathy for that tyrant. She saw now how lonely he must be among strangers who ridiculed his eccentricities.

During the whole performance, the vision of her father constantly recurred in her memory. She asked herself what it was that had made him so cruel, and why he hated her?

Kotlicki brought her a bouquet of roses. She received it coolly, without even glancing at him.

"I see that you are out of sorts to-day," he said, taking her hand.

She pulled it away.

Majkowska, who was just then passing, whispered, pointing to Rosinska: "What a scarecrow! What conventional acting! She is incapable of producing even a single accent of true feeling!"

Behind Janina some gentleman in a high hat was pressing the hands of one of the chorus girls.

"Things are turning out fine, for to-morrow, there will be no rehearsal and we can go to Bielany in the afternoon. Wait for us at your home, we will drop in and take you along with us," whispered Mimi.

"I also am going on that outing," said Kotlicki, "you are going too, aren't you?"

"Probably . . . but if I couldn't go it would be just as great a success."

"In that case I wouldn't go either."

He bent so closely over Janina that she felt his breath upon her face.

"I don't understand you," she said, moving away from him.

"I am going along only for your sake," he whispered in a still quieter tone.

"For my sake? . . ." she queried, glancing at him sharply, and stirred by a sudden aversion.

"Yes . . . surely you must have guessed by now that I love you," said Kotlicki, drawing together his lips which were trembling and looking at her pleadingly.

"There they say the same, only they play a little better!" she remarked scornfully, pointing to the stage.

Kotlicki drew himself erect, a sullen shadow passed over his equine face, his eyes gleaming threateningly.

"I will convince you! . . ."

"Very well, but to-morrow at Bielany, not now," Janina coolly extended her hand in farewell and left for the dressing-room.

Kotlicki gazed after her covetously, biting his lips.

"A comedienne!" he finally whispered, leaving the theater.



CHAPTER VII

Janina awoke at about half-past ten in the morning. Sowinska had just brought in her breakfast.

"Was anyone here to see me? . . ." she asked.

Sowinska nodded her head and handed Janina a letter.

"About an hour ago a ruddy fellow delivered it and asked me to give it to you."

Janina nervously tore open the envelope and immediately recognized the handwriting of Grzesikiewicz:

"My Dear Miss Orlowska,

I have purposely come to Warsaw to see you on a very important matter. If you will kindly deign to be home at eleven o'clock I shall be there at that hour. Please pardon my boldness. Allow me to kiss your hands and remain

Your humble servant,

GRZESIKIEWICZ."

"What's going to happen? . . ." thought Janina, dressing hastily. "What kind of important matter can it be that he writes of? Concerning my father? . . . Can it be that he is ill and longing for me? . . . Oh no! No!"

She quickly drank her tea, tidied her room and patiently awaited Grzesikiewicz's visit. The thought of seeing, at last some one of her own people from Bukowiec even filled her with a certain joy.

"Perhaps he will propose to me again?" Janina thought to herself. And she saw his big weather-beaten face, bronzed by the sun, and those blue eyes gazing so mildly from beneath his shock of flaxen hair. She remembered too, his embarrassed shyness.

"A good, honest man!" she said to herself, walking up and down the room; but then the thought occurred to her that his visit was likely to spoil her intended trip to Bielany, and her enthusiasm began to cool. She determined she would speak to him briefly.

"I wonder what he wants of me?" Janina asked herself uneasily, assuming the most impossible things.

"My father must be very sick and wants me to come to him," she answered herself.

She stood in the center of the room almost dazed, with fear that she must return to Bukowiec.

"No, it is impossible! . . . I couldn't stand it there a single week . . . and moreover, he drove me away from home forever . . ."

A chaotic conflict between hate, sorrow, and a quiet, scarcely perceptible feeling of homesickness began to rage in Janina's heart.

The bell rang in the anteroom.

Janina sat down and waited quietly. She heard the door opening, the voices of Grzesikiewicz and Sowinska, and the sound of an overcoat being hung up.

"May I come in?" asked a voice outside.

"Please do," she whispered, choking with trepidation as she arose from her chair.

Grzesikiewicz entered. His face was even more sunburnt than usual and his blue eyes seemed bluer. He walked stiffly and erectly like a petrified block of meat squeezed into a tight surtout with difficulty. He almost threw his hat upon a basket standing near the door and, kissing Janina's hand, said quickly: "Good morning . . ."

He straightened himself, scanned her face with his eyes and sat down heavily in a chair.

"I had a hard time finding you . . ." he began, and suddenly broke off. Then, as if to bolster up his courage, he attempted to shove aside a chair that interfered with his actions but pushed it so hard that it fell over.

He sprang up, all red in the face, and began to apologize.

Janina smiled, so vividly did that impulsive action remind her of their last talk and that unfortunate proposal. And for a moment it seemed to her that it was now that he was to propose and that they were sitting in the quiet parlor at Bukowiec. She could not explain to herself the impression that he made on her with that honest face, worn by suffering, and with those bright blue eyes which seemed to bring with them echoes of those beloved fields and woods, those quiet glens, that golden sunlight and the free and bounteous life of nature. For one fleeting moment her mind dwelt on all this, but at the same time there awoke memories of all her sufferings and her banishment.

She handed him a box of cigarettes and said in an easy tone, breaking the somewhat prolonged silence: "You give proof of no small courage and . . . kindness by visiting me after all that has happened. . . ."

"Do you remember what I told you the last time," he answered, subduing and softening his voice, "that I would never and always! . . . That I would never cease and would always continue to love you!"

Janina moved impatiently, for his deeply sincere accent pained her.

"I beg your pardon . . . if it makes you angry, I will not say another word about myself . . ." he said with resignation.

"What is the news from home?" she asked, raising her eyes to his.

"How can I tell you? . . . It's something that beggars all description. You would not know your father; he has become an impossible autocrat in his official duties, and outside of them he goes hunting, visits his neighbors, whistles to himself . . . but has become so thin and worn that it is hard to recognize him. Worry is eating him away like a canker."

"Why? . . . What is there for my father to worry about?"

"My God! How can you ask such a question? Are you joking, or haven't you a spark of feeling in you? . . . Why is he worrying? . . . Because you are away . . . because he, like all of us, is dying with longing for you! . . ."

"And what about Krenska? . . ." Janina asked with apparent calmness, although stirred deeply by what he had told her.

"What has Krenska to do with this? . . . He threw her out the very next day after your departure, afterwards received a few days' official leave from his duties and left Bukowiec. . . . In about a week he returned so woebegone and haggard that we scarcely recognized him. Even strangers are crying over him, but you had no pity on him and went forth into the world . . . and what kind of world, besides? . . ."

Janina sprang up violently from her chair.

"Yes, you may be angry with me if you will, but I love you, I love you too well, and we all love you too well to be denied the right to speak what we feel. Have me thrown out of here if you will, and I'll not complain, but I'll wait for you at the street door or meet you anywhere else and keep telling you that your father is dying without you and that he is growing sicker and weaker every day! My mother came across him not so long ago in the woods: he was lying in some bushes and crying like a child. You are killing him. Both of you are killing each other with your pride and unrelenting stubbornness. You are the best woman in the world and I feel that you will not leave him alone, that you will return and give up theatrical life. . . . Aren't you ashamed of associating with such a band of scoundrels? . . . How can you possibly exhibit yourself on the stage! . . ."

He broke off and breathing heavily, wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. Never before had he said so much at one time.

Janina sat with bowed head, her face as pale as a sheet, her lips set tightly and her heart filled with a storm of rebellion and suffering. That sharp voice which she had just heard had in it such a tearful, deep and soul-stirring expression and those words: "Your father is suffering . . . your father is crying . . . your father is longing for you!" penetrated her with so sharp a grief and harried her so painfully, that at moments she wanted to spring up and go to him as quickly as she could; but then again, memories of the past would flood her brain and she would become cool and hardened. Finally she recalled the theater and became entirely indifferent.

"No! He has driven me away forever. . . . I am alone in the world and will remain alone. I could not live without the theater!" Janina said to herself and there arose in her again that mad desire for theatrical conquest.

Grzesikiewicz also became silent, his eyes clouding mistily. He devoured her with his eyes, and had a great desire to fall on his knees before her, kiss her hands and feet and the hem of her dress and beg her to listen to him . . . Then again, when he remembered the whole tragedy of the situation, he felt like springing up from his chair and smashing everything that came in his way; or again such a violent grief would convulse him that he could have cried aloud in sheer despair.

He sat and gazed at that beloved face, now pale and worn, on which the feverish night life of the theater had already left its imprint, and he felt that he would give his very life for her, if she would only go back.

Janina finally bent on him eyes that were glowing with irrevocable determination.

"You must know how my father hates me; you must also know that, when I refused to marry you, he drove me out of his house forever . . . he almost cursed me and drove me out . . ." she repeated with bitterness. "I left because I had to, but I will never return. I will not exchange the freedom of the theater for slavery at home. Things happened as they did because they had to. My father told me at that time that he had no longer a daughter, and I now answer that I have no longer a father. We have parted and will never be reunited again. I am entirely able to shift for myself, and art will suffice me for everything."

"So you will not return?" asked Grzesikiewicz, for that was all he understood of her words.

"No! I have no home and I will not forsake the theater!" replied Janina in a calm voice, regarding him coolly, but her pale lips trembled a little and her bosom throbbed violently, convulsed by the conflict within.

"You will kill him . . . he loves you so . . . he will not outlive such a blow . . . ." said Grzesikiewicz gently.

"No, Andrew, my father does not love me. A person whom you love you do not torment for whole years at a time and then drive away from home like the worst. . . . Even a dog does not turn its young ones out . . . even an animal never does what was done to me!"

"I have seen and know how bitterly he regrets those reckless words and how hard it is for him to live without you. I swear that you will make him happy by returning! That you will restore him to life!"

"Did he tell you that he desired me to return to Bukowiec? Perhaps he has given you a letter for me? Please tell me the whole truth!" she spoke rapidly.

Grzesikiewicz hesitated in confusion and became even sadder.

"No. He neither said anything about it, nor gave me a letter for you," he answered, lowering his voice.

"So that is how much he loves me and how greatly he longs to see me? Ha! ha! ha!" she laughed harshly.

"Don't you know him yet? He will die of thirst rather than beg a glass of water. When I was leaving and told him where I was going, he did not say a word, but looked at me in such a way and gripped my hand so firmly that I understood him entirely. . . ."

"No, you did not understand him at all. My father is not at all concerned about me; he is only concerned over the fact that the whole neighborhood must be speaking about my departure and my joining the theater. . . . Surely, Krenska must have left no stone unturned. . . . He is concerned only about the gossip that is circulating. He feels disgraced through me. He would like to see me broken and begging forgiveness at his feet. That is what he is anxious about!"

"You do not know him! Such hearts . . ."

Janina hastily interrupted him: "Let us not speak of hearts where on one side they do not at all enter into the question, where they are entirely lacking and there is only an insane . . ."

"So then? . . ." he asked rising, for he was choking with a spasm of anger.

The bell in the hall rang sharply, evidently pulled violently by someone.

"I will never return," said Janina with final determination.

"Janina . . . have mercy . . ."

"I do not understand that word," she answered with emphasis, "and I repeat: never! unless it be . . . after I am dead."

"Don't say that, for . . ."

He did not finish for the door suddenly swung wide open and Mimi with Wawrzecki came rushing in.

"Well, are you coming? Hurry and dress yourself, for we start immediately! . . . Ah, I beg your pardon, I did not know you had a visitor," cried Mimi, observing Grzesikiewicz who took his hat, bowed automatically, and, without looking at anyone, whispered.

"Good-bye."

And without more ado he left.

Janina sprang up as though she wished to detain him, but Kotlicki and Topolski were just then entering and greeted her jocularly. After them came some third person.

"What sort of broad gentleman was that? As I live, it is the first time that I saw such a mass of meat in a surtout!" cried that third comer.

"This is Mr. Glogowski. In a week we are to present his play and in a month he will be famous throughout Europe!" said Wawrzecki, introducing him.

"And in three months my fame will reach Mars with all its appurtenances! . . . If you are going to bluff, at least let it be a good bluff" laughed Glogowski.

Janina greeted them all, and in a subdued voice answered Mimi who was asking her about Grzesikiewicz: "An old friend of mine and former neighbor, a very honest man . . ."

"He must be flushed with money, that youth . . . he looks it!" exclaimed Glogowski.

"Yes, he is wealthy. His family owns the largest sheep-growing ranch in Congressional Poland . . ."

"A shepherd! . . . he rather looks as though he were a keeper of elephants! . . ." jested Wawrzecki.

Kotlicki only smiled and discreetly observed Janina.

"Something must have happened here . . . for her voice shows she is deeply moved," he thought. "Perhaps that was her former lover? . . ."

"Come, hurry, for Mela is waiting downstairs in a hack," cried Mimi impatiently.

Janina dressed hastily and they all went out together.

They rode to the bank of the Wisla and from there took a boat to Bielany.

All were in a springtime humor, except Janina. She sat gloomily rapt in thought.

Kotlicki chatted jovially, Wawrzecki jested with Glogowski and the women took part in the merriment, but Janina hardly heard a thing that was being said. She was still pondering her conversation with Grzesikiewicz and the heavy feeling it had left in her heart.

"Is anything troubling you?" Kotlicki asked with anxiety in his voice.

"Me? Oh nothing! . . . I was just musing upon human misery," she answered.

"It is not worth thinking of anything that is not pleasure, full of life and youth . . ."

"Don't complete that nonsense. It is just as if you were to eat off the butter on a piece of bread and then muse over your dry crust that you did a foolish thing after all," interposed Glogowski, "I see you do not like to eat, only to lick at things."

"My dear sir, I have the honor of knowing that ever since I was a schoolboy," Kotlicki retorted sarcastically.

"That isn't the point; the point is that you advocate downright silly things. For instance indulgence, while you have had ample opportunity to prove upon yourself the sad results of that jolly theory."

"Both in life and in literature you are always paradoxical."

"I'll wager you have weak lungs, arthritis, neurasthenia and . . ."

"Count up to twenty."

They began to argue vehemently and then to quarrel.

The boat had passed the railroad bridge and the vast calm of the open country enveloped them on all sides. The sun was shining brightly, but a chill dampness arose from the murky waters of the river. The small waves, saturated with light, like serpents with gleaming scales, splashed about in the sunlight. The long sand dunes resembled water giants, basking in the sun with yellow upturned bellies. A string of scows floated before them; the pilot in a small cockleshell boat rowed on in front and every now and then would raise his voice in a cry which echoed across the water and reached them in a confused medley of tones. A few boatmen plied their oars with automatic motion and their sad song was wafted to the party and floated above their heads. Afterwards a growing silence began to spread around them.

The mild verdure of the shores, the sunlit trail of the waters gleaming with the sheeny softness of satin, the gentle rocking of the boat, the rhythmical stroke of the oars unconsciously imposed a silence upon everybody.

"I will not return!" thought Janina, automatically repeating those words, while she gazed upon the blue expanse of waters and pursued with her eyes the waves that fled swiftly on before her, "I will not return!"

She felt that loneliness was embracing her with ever wider arms and surrounding her soul with an emptiness into which she gazed defiantly. Her sorrow, the thought of her father and Grzesikiewicz, all her former acquaintances and her whole past seemed to be flowing on far behind her so that she saw them dimly in the distant gray mist and only the faint echo of an entreaty or of weeping seemed to reach her now and then.

No! she would not have the strength to turn back and swim against that current that was bearing her onward. Nevertheless, she felt that tears were dropping upon her heart and burning it with bitterness.

They disembarked at the landing-stage at Bielany and began to wind their way up the hill.

Janina walked ahead of the company with Kotlicki who did not leave her for a moment.

"You owe me a reply," he said after a while, assuming a tender expression.

"I answered you yesterday, and to-day you owe me an explanation," she said harshly, for now, after that recent conversation with Grzesikiewicz and all that it had cost her, she felt an almost physical aversion and hatred toward Kotlicki; he struck her as repulsive and brazen.

"An explanation? . . . Can one explain love or analyze a feeling? . . ." he began, uneasily biting his thin lips. He did not like the tone of her voice.

"Let us be sincere, for what you told me is . . ." she cried impulsively.

"Is sincerity itself."

"No, it is only a comedy!" Janina retorted sharply and felt a great desire to strike him in the face.

"You offend me! One can believe a person's feelings without sharing them," he said in a quieter tone so that those who followed them would not hear.

"Now please listen to what I have to say! I want to tell you that your comedy not only wearies me, but is beginning to anger me. I am still too little a hysterical actress and too much a normal woman to take pleasure in such acting. I was never taught by my mother, the secret code of a woman's conduct toward a man, nor did they warn me of man's falsehood and baseness. I observed that quickly enough for myself, and see it every day behind the scenes. You think that to every woman who is in the theater you can boldly talk about your love as though it were some trifle, in the hope that perhaps she will swallow your bait! Actresses are so playful and so silly, aren't they?" she said with stinging scorn. "Would you dare to tell me the same, if I were at home? No, you wouldn't dare tell me you loved me, if you didn't, for there, I would be a woman in your eyes, while here I am only an actress; for there, I would have behind me a father, mother, brothers or some convention which would prohibit you from many things. But here, you don't hesitate. And why? Because here I am alone and an actress, that is a woman to whom you can with impunity tell lies, whom you can with impunity possess and then cast off and go your way without the slightest fear of losing your reputation. Oh, you can be sure, Mr. Kotlicki, that I will not become your mistress, nor any other man's if I do not love him! I have already thought much, too much, about the matter to be deceived by fine phrases!" She spoke rapidly, and her sharp words fell like blows.

He trembled with impatience and gazed on her in amazement. He did not know her, and had not assumed for a moment that he would find an actress who would tell him such things to his face. He gazed at her through half-closed eyes, and stammered ever more frequently, so immensely did he like her for her courage. She fascinated him by her strength of character and honesty, for by those words she had spoken, by her face which faithfully reflected all her inner feelings, and by the sincere tones of her voice he began to perceive that she was an honest and uncommon girl; and in addition she was so beautiful!

"The whip was rawhide with leaden weights at the end of it. You beat with a womanly fury both the guilty and the innocent," said Kotlicki, and seeing that Janina did not answer he added after a while, "Is this not enough for you? If it would be possible during that entire flagellation to kiss your hands, I beg you to continue . . ."

"Kotlicki! . . . Wait a minute there and help us carry the baskets! . . ." called Wawrzecki.

The men carried the baskets with the provisions, while the whole company walked along the steep river bank, seeking a convenient spot for a camping ground.

All about them the lonely wood rustled softly with its young oak leaves and juniper bushes. They halted under a grove of verdant oaks. Behind them was the woodland solitude while beneath them the Wisla gleamed in the sunlight and murmured with its blue waves breaking against the shore.

After the preliminary drinks and sandwiches all became lively.

"Well, now let us drink the health of the initiators of the outing!" cried Glogowski, filling the glasses.

"Let us rather drink to the success of your new play," cried several voices.

"No, that will not help it any . . . it will turn out a fiasco anyway . . ."

"Perhaps Topolski will now reveal to us his secret plan," said Kotlicki who was calmly stretched out on his plaid beside Janina.

"Let that rest! After we have had plenty to eat and still more to drink will be time enough. Perhaps the ladies will untie those packages," cried Wawrzecki.

Napkins were spread out on the grass and a variety of dainties was brought forward and set upon them amid laughter.

"That's nice, but where is the tea?" exclaimed Janina.

Kotlicki jumped up.

"The tea is here and also the samovar, only you, sir, will have to go for some water. We shall go together for it to the Wisla!" cried Majkowska, shaking the charcoal out of a pitcher.

Kotlicki frowned a bit, but went along with her. In a few minutes the samovar was started, Glogowski proving himself a real master.

"That is my specialty!" he shouted blowing at the fire like a pair of bellows. "And I must tell you ladies that very often, more often than I like, I lack coal. It is then that my inventive genius comes to the fore: I stoke the fire with papers or, if that is also missing, I pluck a board from the floor and, willy nilly, the tea is produced."

"You must lead a very diversified life!" remarked Topolski with a laugh.

"A trifle! Just a trifle . . . but I won't say that I relish it."

"I proclaim to all in general and to everyone in particular that the tea is beginning to boil! . . . Now, ladies, assume the roles of Hebes!" called Glogowski.

Janina poured out the tea for all of them before sitting down near Mimi.

"I am organizing a dramatic society," began Topolski.

"I will tell you the only way to do it: you engage a few score of the theatrical tribe by promising them high salaries and give them small advances; you look for a lady treasurer who is wise enough to have a bond and naive enough to deposit it; with it you buy the necessary accessories, have them sent on account and you are ready either to begin, or to break up. And in two months you can repeat the same prescription until you get results," jested Wawrzecki.

"Wawrzecki, quit your confounded nonsense!" cried the irritated Topolski, drinking one glass of brandy after another. "That kind of company any idiot can organize, any Cabinski. I don't want a band of players who will scatter to the four winds as soon as someone lures them with the promise of a big advance, but a strong organization with a well-defined plan, an organization as solid as a stonewall!"

"You often broke up companies yourself and yet you think you can manage actors? . . ." persisted Wawrzecki.

"I am sure of it. Listen all! This is how I would go about it: condition one—about five thousand rubles to begin with; I fish out of all the companies their best forces, thirty persons at most; I pay them moderately but honestly; I assure dividends . . ." "Come now, you had better give up dreaming about dividends!" growled Kotlicki.

"There will be a dividend! there must be!" cried Topolski with growing enthusiasm. "I select my plays: a series of typical and classical things; these will be the walls and foundations of my edifice; furthermore, all the more important novelties and all the folkplays, but away with operetta, away with clownishness, away with the circus, away with everything that is not true art! I want to have a theater and not a puppet show! artists are not clowns!" he cried in an ever louder voice.

Topolski began to cough so violently that all the veins in his neck swelled like whipcords. He coughed for a long time, then took a drink of brandy and began talking again, but in a quieter and slower voice, without looking at anyone, or seeing anything beyond this dream of his whole life, which he related in short and tangled sentences.

Kotlicki, who was not stirred even for a moment by that speech full of inspiration as well as illogicality, remarked: "You are a little late. Antoine in Paris has long ago put into practice what you propose; those are his ideas . . ."

"No, those are my ideas, my dreams; for twenty years already I am carrying them within me!" cried Topolski, growing suddenly livid as though struck by lightning, and gazing in a dazed way at Kotlicki.

"What of that, when others have already partially realized those dreams and given them their name . . ."

"Thieves! they have stolen my idea! they have stolen my idea!" shouted Topolski and fell over half-senseless on the grass, covering his face with his hands, sobbing convulsively and stammering in a drunken voice: "They have stolen my idea! . . . Help! they have stolen my idea!" And he continued to roll about on the grass, sobbing like a grieved child.

"Not because of the fact that that idea is already known do I see the impossibility of realizing such a project," began Glogowski calmly, "but because our public has not yet reached the point where it is ready for such a theater and does not feel the need of such a stage. In the meanwhile, give them the farce full of acrobatic stunts and leg-shows, a half-naked ballet, cancan howling, a little, cheap kitchen sentimentality, a heap of empty phrases on the subject of virtue, morality, the family, duty, love, and . . ."

"Count up to twenty . . ." laughed Kotlicki.

"Just as is the public, so are its theaters; one is worth as much as the other!" remarked Majkowska.

"He who wants to rule the multitude and rule over it, must flatter it and do that which the multitude wants; he must give it that which it needs; he must first be its slave so that he may later become its master," said Kotlicki slowly and with unction.

"I will say: no! I neither want to cringe to the mob, nor be its master; I prefer to go my own way alone . . ." answered Glogowski emphatically.

"A splendid standpoint! From it you can laugh at everyone to your heart's content."

"Miss Janina, please let me have some tea!" cried the already irritated Glogowski, springing up violently, throwing his hat at a tree and feverishly rumpling his sparse hair.

"You are ever a fiery radical of native breed," said Kotlicki with a good-natured irony.

"And you are a poor fish, a seal, a whale . . ."

"Count up to twenty!"

"Those are fine arguments, indeed! . . . Here is a much better one," cried Wawrzecki, handing Glogowski his cane.

Glogowski calmed himself, gazed around a moment and began drinking his tea.

Majkowska was listening silently, while Mimi, stretched out on Wawrzecki's overcoat, was fast asleep.

Janina was serving tea to all and did not lose a word of that conversation. She had already forgotten about Grzesikiewicz, about her father, and about her talk with Kotlicki, and was entirely engrossed by the questions that were now being discussed, while Topolski's dreams fascinated her by their fantasies. Such general discussions on art and artistic subjects absorbed her entirely.

"What about your dramatic society?" she asked Topolski who was just raising his head.

"It will be . . . it must be formed!" answered Topolski.

"I warrant you it will be," interposed Kotlicki, "not the kind that Topolski desires but that which will be the best within the bounds of possibility. It will even be possible to introduce certain improvements by way of variety and attraction, but we shall leave the reformation of the theater to someone else; for that you would need hundreds of thousands of rubles and you would have to start it in Paris."

"The reformation of the theater will not originate with the managers, and as for dramatic creativity, what is it really? . . . The seeking of something in the dark, a dog-like scenting about, an aimless straying, or the antics of a flea. A genius must arrive to revolutionize the modern theater; I already have a feeling that one is coming . . ." asserted Glogowski.

"How is that? . . . Aren't the existing masterpieces of the drama sufficient for creating an ideal theater?" queried Janina.

"No . . . those masterpieces belong to the past; we need other works. For us those masterpieces are a very important archeology," answered Glogowski.

"So in your estimation Shakespeare is antiquated?"

"Sh! let us not speak of him; he is the whole universe; we can merely contemplate him, but never understand him . . ."

"And Schiller?"

"A Utopian and classic: an echo of the Encyclopedists and the French Revolution. He represents nobility, order, German doctrinarianism and pathetic and wearisome declamation."

"And Goethe?" ventured Janina, who had developed a great liking for Glogowski's paradoxical definitions.

"That means only Faust, but Faust is so complicated a machine that since the death of the inventor no one knows how to wind it or start it going. The commentators push its wheels, take it apart, clean it, and dust it, but the machine will not go and already is beginning to rust a little. . . . Moreover, it is a furious aristocracy. That Mr. Faust is first of all not the ideal type of man, but an experimenter; he is nothing but the brain of one of those learned rabbis who spend their whole lives on pondering whether it is proper to enter the synagogue with the right or the left foot first; he is a vivisector, who, after breaking the heart of Margaret in the process of his experimentation, and fearing the threat of imprisonment, and being unable by virtue of his shortsightedness to see anything beyond his study and his retorts, makes a sport of complaining and laments that life is base and knowledge is worthless. In truth, it requires a great deal of genuinely German arrogance to maintain when you have a catarrh that everybody else has it or ought to have it."

"I prefer such merry works to your wise plays," whispered Kotlicki.

"Oh, and what of Shelley and Byron?" begged Janina, whose interest was fully aroused.

"I prefer foolishness even when it presumes to speak rather than when it seeks to create something" Glogowski hastily flung back at Kotlicki.

"Aha, Byron! . . . Byron is a steam engine producing a rebellious energy; a lord who was dissatisfied in England and dissatisfied in Venice with Suiciolla, for although he had a warm climate and money he was bored. He is a rebel-individualist, a strong, passionate monster; a lord who is always seething with fury and using all the forces of his wonderful talent to spite his enemies. He slapped England's face with masterpieces. He is a mighty protestant out of boredom and in his own personal interest."

"And Shelley?"

"Shelley again, is a divine lingo for the public of Saturn; he is the poet of the elements and not for us mortals."

Glogowski became silent and went to pour himself some tea.

"We are still listening; at least, I am waiting with impatience for you to continue your very interesting exposition," exclaimed Janina.

"Very well, but I am going to skip over a great many immortals so as to finish sooner."

"You can continue on the condition that you'll do so without tinkling the bells and beating the tambourine."

"Kotlicki, keep quiet! You are a miserable philistine, a typical representative of your base species and you are denied a voice when human beings are speaking!"

"Gentlemen, please quit your arguing, for I can't sleep," pitifully pleaded Mimi.

"Yes, yes, it isn't at all amusing!" added Majkowska with a mighty yawn.

Wawrzecki began again to fill the glasses. Glogowski moved close to Janina and began enthusiastically to expound to her his theory.

"Ibsen makes a strange impression on me; he foreshadows someone mightier than himself who is yet to come; he is like the light of dawn before the rising sun. And as regards the newest, over-praised and over-advertised Germans: Suderman and Company they are merely a loud prating about small things; much ado about nothing. They wish to convince the world for instance that it is unnecessary to wear suspenders with your trousers, because you can sometimes wear them without suspenders."

"So we have finally got to the point where there are no more left to dispose of," interposed Kotlicki. "One got a whack over the head, another a jab in the ribs, a third a very polite kick and so forth . . ."

"No, my dear sir, I still remain!" rejoined Glogowski, with a comical bow.

"We demolished vast edifices for the sake of a soap bubble."

"Perhaps, but since even in soap bubbles the sun is reflected . . ."

"Therefore, let us have another drink of brandy!" exclaimed Topolski, who had been silent up till now.

"Throw out all that argumentation to the dogs! . . . Let us drink and quit thinking!" chimed in Wawrzecki.

"That last statement is an epitome of yourself, Wawrzecki!" remarked Glogowski.

"Let us drink and love one another!" proposed Kotlicki, rousing himself and tinkling his glass against the bottle.

"To that I will agree, as I am Glogowski, I will agree, for love alone is the soul of the world!"

"Wait a minute, I will sing you something about love," cried Wawrzecki, and he proceeded to drone an amorous ditty.

"Bravo Wawrzecki!" cried the entire company and with that they all abandoned themselves to pure merriment, ceased arguing and babbled any nonsense that came to their lips.

"Most esteemed ladies and gentlemen! the sky is beginning to cloud and on earth the bottles are all empty. Let us beat a retreat!" finally suggested Wawrzecki.

"But how?" chorused a few voices.

"We will go on foot, for it is not more than a mile to Warsaw."

"We'll hire some husky fellow to carry the baskets for us. I'll go and see if I can find someone," said Wawrzecki, and he went off in the direction of a monastery.

Before he returned all were ready for the homeward journey. The general mood of gayety had even risen, for Mimi was dancing a waltz with Glogowski on the greensward. Topolski was so drunk that he continually kept talking to himself and quarreling with Majkowska. Kotlicki smiled and kept close to Janina who had become very sportive and merry. She smiled at him and conversed with him, hardly remembering his recent proposal. He was sure that the impression of it had merely glided over her soul and sunk away in forgetfulness.

They walked in disordered groups as is usual after an outing. Janina was weaving a wreath of oak leaves, while Kotlicki was helping her and amusing her with piquant remarks. She listened to him, but when they entered into a bigger and real wood where the ground was covered with dense underbrush, she suddenly became grave, gazed at the trees with such great joy, touched their trunks and branches with such tenderness, her lips and eyes glowed with such rapture, that Kotlicki asked her, pointing to the trees: "No doubt they must be good friends of yours?"

"Yes indeed, good and sincere friends and not comedians!" she replied with a light irony in her voice.

"You have a very vengeful memory. You neither believe, nor forgive. I desire only one thing: to be able to convince you . . ."

"Then marry me!" she exclaimed quickly, turning towards him.

"I beg for your hand!" he murmured in the same tone.

They glanced straight into each other's eyes and both suddenly became gloomy. Janina knitted her brows and began unconsciously to tear her unfinished wreath with her teeth, while Kotlicki bowed his head and became silent.

"Come, let us hurry, we shall be late for the performance!" called someone, and they hastened to catch up with the rest of the company.

"So to-morrow there is to be a read rehearsal of my play?" Glogowski was asking Topolski.

"To be exact, it will be only a reading of the play itself, for Dobek has not yet finished writing out the roles," answered Topolski.

"Great Scott! and when do you expect to present it?"

"Don't fear, the Philistines will hiss and hoot you soon enough, without your hurrying!" Kotlicki twitted him.

"We shall present it in a week from next Tuesday . . . at least I would have it so," replied Topolski.

"Or, strictly speaking, there will remain for rehearsals and for the learning of the roles only four days. No one will know his part, no one will be able to master it even passably in so short a time. That's nothing short of murder, cold-blooded murder!" cried Glogowski.

"You'll treat Dobek to a few whiskeys and he will safely pull the play through for you," suggested Wawrzecki.

"Yes, he will shout for everybody. . . . As the matter stands, it is best to announce that there will take place merely a reading of the play."

"You needn't worry about me, I'll learn my role," Majkowska assured him.

"And I also," added Janina.

"I know the ladies always know their parts but the men . . ."

"The men will play their parts well without having to learn them," remarked Wawrzecki. "Don't you know that Glas never studies his roles! A few rehearsals familiarize him with the situations of the play and the prompter does the rest."

"That's why he plays so splendidly!" sneered Glogowski.

"What do you want? He's a good actor and not at all a bad comedian."

"Yes, because he always knows how to improvise some nonsense with which to cover up his bungling."

"Please give me an entirely serious answer. Were those last words of yours only a joke or were they an expression of your wishes and a condition?" Kotlicki again whispered to Janina as a certain idea entered into his head.

"Every variety is good, providing it is not wearisome. Have you heard that before?" answered Janina impatiently.

"Thank you! I will remember it. . . . But do you know this: patience is the first condition of success."

Kotlicki glanced at her quizzically, bowed to her with his head, and retired among the rest of the company. He possessed a brazen self-confidence and decided, at all events, to wait.

Kotlicki was not one of those whom a woman can drive away from herself with scorn or even with insults. He accepted everything and carefully stored it away in his memory for a future reckoning. He was a man who had a contempt for women, who told people what he thought to their very faces, and who always craved women and love. He ignored the fact that he was ugly, for he knew he was rich enough to buy any woman that he might desire. He belonged to that category of men which is ready for anything.

He now walked along smiling at some thought that was in his mind, and striking with his cane the weeds that were in his path.

It grew dark and the rain began to fall in large drops.

"We will get drenched like chickens!" laughed Mimi, opening her parasol.

"Miss Janina, my umbrella is at your service," called Glogowski.

"Thank you very much, but as far as I am able, I do not use any protection against the rain; I just dote on getting wet in the rain."

"You have the instincts of . . ." he broke off suddenly and pressed his hand to his mouth with a comical gesture.

"Finish what you began to say . . . please do . . ."

"You have the instincts of fish and geese. . . . I am curious to know how they have developed in you."

Janina smiled, for she remembered her old autumn and winter tramps through the woods in the greatest storms and rainfalls, and she answered merrily: "I like such things. I am used from my childhood to endure rains and rough weather . . . I am simply wild about storms."

"My, what fiery blood! It must be something atavistic."

"It's merely a habit or an inner need which has grown to the proportions of a passion."

Glogowski offered his arm to Janina; she accepted and began to relate to him in an easy, friendly tone the various adventures she had experienced on her excursions in the country. She felt as unrestrained in his company as though she had known him from childhood. At moments she would even forget that this was the first time in her life that she had met him. She was won over to him by his bright and happy face and by the somewhat mild sincerity of his character; she felt in him a brotherly and honest soul.

Glogowski listened to her, answered her questions, and observed her with curiosity. Finally, choosing an appropriate moment, he said frankly: "May the deuce take me, but you are an interesting woman, a very interesting one! I will tell you something; just now a certain thought struck me and I offer it to you hot from the griddle, only don't think it strange. I detest conventionality, social hypocrisy, the affectation of actresses, etc., count up to twenty! . . . and that is just what I fail, as yet, to see in you. Oho! I immediately noticed that you were free from all that. Frankly, I like you as a certain type that one meets very rarely. It is interesting, interesting!" he repeated, almost to himself. "We might become friends!" he cried delightedly, speaking his thoughts aloud, "For, although women always disappoint me, because sooner or later the female of the species crops out in every one of them, still, a new experiment might be worth something . . . ."

"Frankness in return for frankness," said Janina, laughing at the lightning-like swiftness with which he formed determinations. "You also are an interesting specimen."

"Well, then, we agree! Let us shake and be good friends!" he exclaimed, extending his hand.

"But I haven't yet finished what I wanted to say: I must tell you that I do without confidants and friends entirely. That smacks of sentimentality and is not very safe."

"Bosh! Friendship is worth more than love. I see it's beginning to pour in earnest. It is the dogs crying over rejected friendship. I shall have the opportunity of meeting you more often, shall I not? For you have within you something . . . something like a piece of a certain kind of soul that one comes across very rarely."

"I am at the theater every day for rehearsals and almost every day at the performances."

"Oh the deuce take it, that won't do at all! If I attended on you for only once a week, it would give rise to so much gossip, twaddle, surmises."

"Oh I don't care what people say about me!" Janina laughed with an easy air.

"Ho! ho! I see you are of the fighting variety . . . a regular gamecock! I like a person who treats with scant ceremony that old rag called public opinion."

"I think that as long as I have nothing to reproach myself with, I can listen calmly to what they say about me."

"Pride, a capital pride!"

"Why don't you bring out your play in the Warsaw Theater?"

"Because they did not want to produce it. That, you see, is a very elegant and highly perfumed establishment and only for a very delicate and subtly feeling public, while my play does not smell a bit of the salon; at the most, it smells of the fields, a little of the woods and a trifle of the peasant's hut. There they want, not truth, but flirtation, conventionality bluffing, etc., count up to twenty. Moreover, I had no backing, and they already have their patented play manufacturers."

"I thought it was only necessary to write something good and they would immediately produce it."

"Great Scott! No! . . . quite the reverse is true. Just look how much I must bear before even such as Cabinski presents my play! . . . Now raise that to the fourth power and only then will you have some conception of the joys of a beginning comedy writer, who, in addition, does not know how to secure patronage for his plays."

They became silent. The rain fell incessantly and was already forming big puddles of water along the road. Glogowski gazed gloomily at the city whose towers appeared outlined upon the misty horizon.

"A base city!" he grumbled angrily. "For three years I have vainly been trying to conquer it. I am struggling and killing myself, and yet, not even a dog knows me."

"If you keep on telling them that they are base knaves and fools you will never conquer them."

"I will. They will not love me, to be sure, but they will have to reckon with me, they must! However, such citadels are most easily stormed by actors, singers, and dancers. They make a clean sweep of everything with only one appearance."

"But their triumph is only for a day. After they have left the stage all trace of them is lost like that of a stone cast into the water!" said Janina with a certain bitterness, gazing fixedly at the ever nearer appearing, crowded walls of Warsaw. Only at that moment did she realize that the fame of which she dreamed was merely the fame of a day.

"It seems to me that you have an appetite for the same thing that I have," remarked Glogowski.

"I have!" she answered with emphasis and her voice resounded with the explosive force of something that had been long pent up.

"I have!" she repeated, but this time in a much quieter tone and without enthusiasm. The light died away in Janina's eyes and they strayed aimlessly over those heights of the city in the distance, without understanding anything, for she was perturbed by the thought of that ephemeral fame, for she remembered the faded wreaths of Cabinska and the bygone fame of Stanislawski, for she was thinking with growing bitterness of those thousands of famous actors who were dead and whose names even were forgotten. Janina felt a distressing conflict of feelings in her breast. She leaned more heavily on Glogowski's arm and walked on without saying another word.

At Zakroczymska Street they took a hack; Kotlicki jumped in and went along with them, forming a party of three. Janina eyed him angrily, but he pretended he did not notice it and gazed at her with his everlasting smile. Glogowski and Kotlicki accompanied her to her home. She had only enough time left to rush into the house, change her dress, take the things she needed and immediately start off again for the theater.