It was already dawning.

Sowinska opened the door for her and grumbled in irritation: "You should have come home earlier, instead of waking people at this hour of the night."

Janina did not answer, bowing her head as under a blow.

"The base wretches! The base wretches!" That was the one cry that arose in her heart, filled with rebellion and hatred.

Janina no longer felt the shame and the humiliation, but only a boundless rage. She ran about the room as though she were mad, unknowingly ripped her waist and, unable to control her fury, fell exhausted upon her bed with her clothes on.

Her sleep was one dreadful torment. She sprang up every minute with a cry as though to run away, then again, she raised her hand as though with a glass full of wine and shouted through her sleep: Vive! She would begin to sing or to cry every now and then with her feverish lips: "The base wretches! The base wretches!"



CHAPTER IX

In a few days after the premiere of The Churls, which remained upon the bill, but attracted ever smaller audiences, Glogowski came to Janina's home.

"What is the matter with you? . . ." she exclaimed, extending her hand in friendly greeting.

"Nothing. . . . Well, I improved my play a little. Did you read the criticisms?"

"Some of them."

"I have brought all the reviews," said Glogowski. "I'll read them."

He began to read.

One of the important weeklies maintained that The Churls was a very good, original, and superbly realistic play; that with Glogowski there had, at last, appeared a real dramatist who had let a current of fresh air into the stagnant and anaemic atmosphere of our dramatic creativity, and had given us real people and real life. The only cause for regret was that the staging of the play was beneath criticism and the acting of it, with one or two exceptions, scandalous.

The reviewer of one of the most estimable dailies for two whole days rambled on in a special supplement about the history of the theater in France and about German actors, he discussed theatrical novelties and after every two paragraphs or so would remark in parenthesis: "I saw him at the Odeon," "I heard this at the Burg Theater" "I admired such acting in London," etc. Then he adduced various theatrical anecdotes, praised actors who had died half a century ago, harked back to the past of the stage, spoke in several paragraphs about the red rags of radicalism that had begun to appear on the stage, praised with paternal indulgence the actors appearing in The Churls, flattered Cabinski and wound up by saying that he would probably give his opinion of the play itself only after the author had written another one, for this one was merely to be forgiven a novice.

A third reviewer contended that the play was not at all bad and would even be excellent, if the author had chosen to honor theatrical traditions and added music and dances to it.

A fourth took a diametrically opposite viewpoint, maintaining that the play was positively worthless, that it was rubbish, but that the author possessed at least the one merit that he had avoided the cut and dried formulas by failing to introduce the usual songs and dances which always lower the value of folk plays.

In the fifth review a "specialist" on garden-theaters wrote about a hundred paragraphs somewhat to this effect: "The Churls by Mr. Glogowski hm! . . . not a bad thing . . . it would even be entirely good . . . but . . . although, considering again . . . at any rate . . . one must have the courage to tell the truth. . . . At all events . . . be that as it may . . . (with a little qualifying phrase) the author has a talent. The play is . . . hm . . . let us see, how can we define it? About two months ago I wrote something about it, so I refer those that are interested to my former article. . . . They played it excellently," and he enumerated the entire cast, placing beside the name of each actress a sugary epithet, and an ingratiating remark, a polite description, a melancholy equivocation and an empty phrase.

"What do you call all that?" inquired Janina.

"A libretto for an operetta. Entitle it Theatrical Criticisms and set it to music and you will have such a show that the whole nation will flock to it as to a church festival."

"And what answer did you give to all that?"

"I? . . . Nothing, of course! I merely turned my back on them and, since I have a splendid plan for a new play, I shall immediately start working on it. I have received a job as a dramatic coach at Radomsk and I shall go there for a half year. I am only waiting for the final notification."

"Is it absolutely necessary for you to go?"

"Yes, I must! Dramatic coaching is my only means of support. For two months I have been without any occupation and now I am penniless. I presented the play at my own expense, paid my respects to the public, had a good time at Warsaw and now it is time to quit! It is time to ring down the curtain so that I may prepare for another farce. Goodbye, Miss Janina. Before I leave, I'll drop in here or at the theater."

He shook hands with her, exclaimed, "May the deuce take me!" and hurried away.

Janina was sad. She had become so accustomed to Glogowski, to his eccentricities, paradoxes, and to that rough and ready manner which was merely a screen for his shyness and hypersensitive delicacy that regret filled her at the thought that she was now to remain alone.

She had no more money left and was living solely on what she received at the theater. Janina dared not admit it to herself, but with each new request for money she would be reminded of her home and of those times when it was unnecessary for her to think of anything, for she had all she needed. She felt deeply humiliated by this almost daily begging for a few meager copecks, but there was no way out of it, unless it was the one that she constantly read in the gray eyes of Sowinska and saw exemplified in the life of her companions.

Almost each evening Janina would stroll on Theater Place. If she was in a great hurry, she would only pass through the place, get a glimpse of the Grand Theater and return home again, but if she had plenty of time she would find a seat on the square or on a bench near the tramcar station and from there gaze at the rows of columns, at the lofty profile of the theater's facade and lose herself in dreaming. She somehow felt that those walls drew her irresistibly to them. She experienced moments of deep delight when passing under the colonnade, or when in the calm of a bright night she viewed the long gray mass of the edifice. That huge stone giant seemed to speak to her and she would listen to the whispers, the echoes, and the sounds that floated from it. Spread out before her in the dim twilight and visible to her soul alone, there would pass before her imagination the scenes that were acted there not long ago.

An additional reason for losing herself in dreams was to dull the pinch of poverty, that had become more acute, for the second half of the theatrical season, from a financial standpoint, was a great deal worse than the first. The attendance was increasingly smaller because of the continual rains and the cold evenings and, of course, the pay of the actors was proportionately smaller.

It often happened that Cabinski in the middle of a performance would take the cash box and make away with it under the pretext that he was ill, leaving only a few rubles to be divided among the company and, if he was caught before he made his escape, he would almost cry.

And if he led anyone by the arm in a friendly manner to the box office it was a prearranged sign for Gold, who was to say that there was no money to be had. If he did not lead a person in this manner, the treasurer would assume a worried look and complain: "I haven't even enough to pay the gas bills and where am I going to get the money for the rent? Why, there isn't enough to pay running expenses."

"Let him have at least something. Perhaps we can put off the payment of some bill to-day . . ." Cabinski would pretend to intercede.

He would then leave an order for the payment of the money and walk away. But it almost always so happened that Gold did not have the sum for which the order was made out. The amount paid was always short, even if it were only by a few copecks. The actors called him all sorts of names, but each took what was offered.

Gold pretended to be insulted and usually appealed to the directress, who would always sit in the box office whenever she was not taking part in the play. Cabinska would then sharply reproach the actors and loudly praise the honesty of Gold, who with the small salary that he received helped his sister, in addition to supporting himself. Gold would beam with joy at the remembrance of his sister; his eyes would flash with tenderness and at such moments he would fervently promise to pay the missing amount on the following day without fail; but he never paid.

The performances were rattled off to get through with them, for the general disorder caused by Cabinski's over-thieveries was growing ever greater and, moreover, the nearness of the departure for Warsaw, the debts in which all were swamped, the approach of winter and the worry over securing new engagements did not put anyone in a mood for playing.

And all the while Cabinski, kissed everyone and promised to pay, but never did so. He knew how to arrange matters so skillfully and acted so excellently the part of a man worried about the welfare of everyone that Janina feeling his troubles and believing him, often lacked the courage to remind him of the money he owed her. Moreover, she knew that between the director and his wife there went on a continual battle over expenses and that the nurse often bought various things for the children out of her own savings, while Cabinska would sit twice as long at the pastry shop to avoid hearing the complaints.

Slowly, but in an ever narrowing circle, poverty hemmed Janina in and clouded her face with ceaseless worry.

Janina suffered all the more in her present condition because she was unable to seclude herself from other people as she used to do at Bukowiec after every quarrel with her father. She could not rave with the gales and calm herself inwardly by sheer physical exhaustion. She tramped about the city but everywhere she met too many people. She would have gladly confided to Glogowski all that troubled her, but had not the courage to do so, for she was restrained by pride. Glogowski seemed to guess her condition, or at least her worries, and would often remind her that she ought to tell him everything . . . everything. But she did not do so.

She stayed at home as little as possible, and whenever she entered the house she tried to do it so quietly that no one might hear her. It was not the possibility that she might find herself thrown out into the street on the morrow that frightened her, but the fact that Mme. Anna or Sowinska might say to her curtly: "Pay what you owe me."

But that moment finally arrived. While eating her dinner Janina knew the inevitable had come. She caught just one glance of Mme. Anna's eyes while she was serving the soup and in them read everything.

After the meal, which to Janina had been torture, Mme. Anna followed her immediately and, in the most unconcerned manner, began to relate something about a fantastic customer. Then, suddenly, as though she had remembered something, she said: "Oh yes, I almost forgot! Perhaps you will let me have that half-month's rent, for I must pay the landlord to-day."

"I haven't the money to-day . . ." she wanted to add something else, but her voice failed her.

"What do you mean? Please give me what you owe me! I hope you don't think that I can feed anyone free of charge . . . just for fun, or for the sake of having them as an ornament in my home! A fine ornament indeed, that stays up all night and comes home only in the wee hours of the morning!"

"You needn't fear that I won't pay you!" cried Janina suddenly aroused.

"I need the money right away!"

"You will have it . . . in an hour!" answered Janina, making some sudden determination; she glanced with such scorn at Mme. Anna that the latter left without a word, slamming the door after her.

From her companions Janina had heard something about the pawnshop and she immediately went there to pawn her gold bracelet, the only one that she possessed.

On returning home she immediately paid Mme. Anna, who was surprised, but not very polite.

Having done that Janina added: "I will have my meals at the restaurant; I don't want to trouble you."

"Just as you like. If things here don't suit you, you are free to do as you please!" whispered the deeply humiliated Mme. Anna.

By that one act Janina incurred the enmity of the whole house.

"I will sell everything I possess . . . even to the last button!" she said to herself with bitter resolve.

And Janina calculated that for one half of what she had been paying Mme. Anna she could get all the food that she needed. Wolska directed her to a cheap lunch-room and she went there for her dinners; when she had not money enough for that, a roll with a sardine had to suffice her for the entire day.

But one day the theater was closed, for there were only twenty rubles in the treasury; on the following day the performance was postponed because of a heavy downpour. Janina, like everyone else, did not receive a single copeck from Cabinski and during those two days had absolutely nothing to eat.

This first hunger which she could not appease because she had nothing to appease it with had a fearful effect upon her. She felt within herself a strange and unceasing pain.

"Starvation! Starvation!" Janina whispered to herself in terror.

Hitherto she had known it by its name only. Now she wondered at that sensation of hunger within her. It seemed strange to her that she felt like eating and hadn't the money even to buy herself a roll!

"Is it possible that I have nothing to eat?" Janina asked herself.

From the kitchen there was wafted to her the smell of frying meat. She shut the door tightly for that smell nauseated her.

Janina remembered with a strange emotion that the majority of great artists in various ages also suffered poverty and hunger. The thought consoled her for a while. She felt as though she were anointed with the first pang of martyrdom for art's sake.

She smiled in the mirror with a melancholy look at her yellowish and worn face. She tried to read to rid herself, as it were, of her own personality, but she could not, for she constantly felt that growing hunger.

She gazed out of the window at the long yard surrounded on all sides by the high windows of the adjoining houses, but she saw how in a few houses people were sitting down to the table and saw the workmen in the yard also eating their dinner from small clay pots. She quickly drew back from the window for she felt hunger like a steel hand with sharp claws tearing her even more violently.

"Everybody is eating!" Janina said to herself as though this was the first time that she had taken note of that fact.

Later she lay down and slept until the evening without going either to the rehearsal or to Cabinska's home, but she felt even weaker upon awaking and had a painful dizziness in her head, while that keen and constant sapping sensation within herself tormented her so that she wept.

In the evening in the dressing-room a boisterous gayety possessed Janina; she laughed continually, joked and made fun of her companions quarreled over some trifle with Mimi and then flirted from the stage with the occupants of the front row of seats.

When the counselor appeared behind the scenes right after the first act with a box of candy, Janina greeted him joyously and pressed his hand so tightly that the old man became confused. Afterwards she sat down in some dark corner, waiting for the stage-director to cry: "Enter!" When the darkness and silence enveloped her, she broke into convulsive sobbing.

After the performance Janina received a quadruple payment on account two whole rubles. Cabinski gave them to her himself in secret so that the others might not see it.

Janina went out for supper on the veranda and became intoxicated with one glass of whiskey so that she herself requested Wladek to escort her home.

From that evening Wladek followed her like a shadow and began openly to show her his love, paying no attention to the fact that his mother was asking everybody in the theater about him and constantly tracking both him and Janina.

One day Glogowski came rushing into Janina's home and cried out already from the doorway: "Well, I have come back again to my Zulus! . . ."

He flung his hat on a trunk, sat on the bed and began to roll a cigarette.

Janina gazed at him calmly and thought how strange it was that the coming of this friend who had interested her so deeply in the past should now leave her so indifferent.

"So you do not weep with joy at seeing me again, eh? Ha! I'll have to resign myself to it. No doubt the dogs alone will weep over me! May the deuce take me! But don't you happen to know what is the matter with Kotlicki? He does not come to the theater any more and I can't find him anywhere. He must have journeyed somewhere."

"I have not seen him since the night of that supper," answered Janina slowly.

"There must be some reason for his disappearance! Probably some adventure, some love affair, some . . . But why should I bother about such a green monkey, eh? Isn't that true?"

"Indeed it is!" whispered Janina, turning her face toward the window.

"Oh! and what does that mean?" he cried, glancing sharply into her eyes. "Goodness, how you have changed! Sunken and glassy eyes, yellowish complexion, sharpened features. . . . What does it all mean?" he asked in a quieter tone.

Suddenly he struck his hand to his forehead and began to run up and down the room like a maniac.

"What an idiot I am. What a monster! Here I am parading about Warsaw, while here real, artistic poverty has quartered itself in earnest! Miss Janina," he cried, taking her hand and looking steadily into her eyes, "Miss Janina! I want you to tell me everything as at confession. May the deuce take me, but you must tell me!"

Janina was silent; but seeing his honest face and hearing that sympathetic voice whose accents had a strange way of gripping one's heart, she suddenly felt overcome by feeling, and tears stood in her eyes. She could not speak for emotion.

"Well, well, there's no use crying, for I shall depart anyway," he said jokingly to hide his own emotion. "Now, just listen to me . . . but without any protests or loud opposition, for I detest parliamentarism! I see you are in poverty and theatrical poverty in the bargain. . . . Well, I happen to know what it's like. Now, for goodness' sake, stop blushing. Poverty that is honestly acquired is not anything to be ashamed of! It's nothing but an ordinary smallpox which all people who are worth anything in this world have to pass through. Ho! ho! I have been playing blindman's buff with troubles since many a year! Well, I shall end what I am saying in a gallop. Let us do this . . ."

He turned around, took from his pocketbook thirty rubles, that is, all the money that had been sent him for his journey, placed it under Janina's pillow and returned to his former seat.

"'Now we are agreed, are we not, my cousin . . .' said Louis XI after beheading the Duke of Anjou. I will accept no appeal and if you dare to . . ."

He grasped his hat and extending his hand, said softly: "Good-bye, Miss Janina."

With a desperate motion, Janina hastily barred the door with her body.

"No, no! Do not humiliate me! I am unfortunate enough as it is," she whispered, firmly holding his hand.

"There you have a woman's philosophy! May the deuce take me, but that which I did is as natural as the fact that I will some day blow out my brains and that you will become a great actress!"

Janina began to expostulate with him, and finally to urge him to take back his money, saying that she did not need it, that she would not accept it, and showing a deep aversion to being helped.

Glogowski became gloomy and said roughly: "What! May the deuce take me, but of the two of us I certainly am not the fool! But no! I refuse to get provoked about it. I shall sit down calmly and talk it over with you seriously. I don't want you to get angry at me over such an empty thing as money. You don't want to take it, although you need it, and why? Because a false shame deters you, because you have been taught that such simple human things as helping one another lowers one's pride. Such conceptions are already becoming putrid. To the museum with them! Those are foolish and evil prejudices. May the deuce take me, but it requires a European brain and hysterical subtlety to hesitate to accept money from a human being like yourself when you are in need. Why and to what purpose do you think the human herd unites itself into some form of society? Is it mutually to devour and rob one another or mutually to help one another? I know you will tell me that it is otherwise, but I answer you that that is precisely why we have so much evil in this world. And once we recognize a thing as evil we ought to shun it. Man ought to do good. That is his duty. To do good is the wisest mathematics. But Great Scott! What's the use of my making so much ado about it!" he cried in irritation.

He continued to speak for a long while yet, scoffed, swore occasionally, shouted: "May the deuce take me," and raged fiercely, but in his voice there was so much sincere and deep friendliness, such heartfelt kindness, that Janina, although she was not at all convinced, accepted his proffered aid with a grateful handclasp only because she did not wish to offend him by refusing.

"Well, that is what I like! And now . . . good-bye!" he said, arising to go.

"Good-bye! I wish to thank you once more and I am so very grateful and obligated to you . . ." murmured Janina.

"If you only knew how much kindness people have shown me! I would like to repay only one hundredth part of it to others. I will add yet that we shall no doubt meet each other in the spring."

"Where?" asked Janina.

"Bah! I don't know! but that it will be in the theater of that I am sure, for I have determined to join the theater in the spring, if only for a half year so that I may gain a better knowledge of the stage."

"Oh, that's an excellent idea!"

"Now we are even with one another, as my father used to say after he had massaged my hide so that it shone as though freshly tanned. I leave you my address and say nothing, only remind you that you are to tell me everything by letter . . . everything! Do you give me your word?"

"I give you my word!" Janina answered gravely.

"I trust your word as though it were that of a man, although with women a word of honor is usually an empty word only, which they make use of, but never fulfill. Goodbye!"

Glogowski pressed both her hands firmly, raised them a little as though he were eager to kiss them, but quickly dropped them again, glanced into her eyes, laughed a trifle unnaturally and departed.

Janina sat thinking for a long time about him. She felt so deep a gratitude toward him and felt so cheered and strengthened by her talk with him that she regretted she did not know on what train Glogowski was leaving, for she had a desire to see him once more.

Then again, there arose in her something that protested loudly against the aid he had given her, something that saw in that kindness an insult.

"Alms!" Janina whispered bitterly and felt a burning pain of humiliation.

"Can't I live alone, can't I get along by my own unaided strength, can't I be sufficient unto myself? Must I continually lean on someone for support? Must there always be someone watching over me? The others know how to help themselves, why can't I?" she asked herself.

Janina pondered over this, but a moment later she went to the pawnshop to redeem her bracelet and on the way bought herself an inexpensive autumn hat.

Life dragged on for her slowly, sluggishly, and wearily.

Janina was sustained only by the hope, or rather by a deep faith that all this would change radically and soon, and in this longing anticipation she began to pay ever more attention to Wladek. She knew that he loved her. She listened almost daily to his confessions and proposals, smiling deep within herself and thinking that in spite of all she could not become that which her companions became. Their mode of life aroused a deep aversion in her for she felt a truly organic revulsion to all forms of filth. But these attentions of Wladek had at least this effect, that they awakened in her for the first time conscious thoughts of love.

She dreamed at moments of loving a man to whom she could give herself entirely and for all time; she dreamed of a united life full of ecstasy and love, such a love as poets presented in their plays; and then there would pass before her mind the figures of all the great lovers about whom she had read, passionate whispers, burning embraces, volcanic passions and that whole Titanic love life, the remembrance of which sent a tremor of delight through her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Good! we can read it together."

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

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

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

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

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

"Happy?" she repeated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You are an enthusiast," he said.

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

"Even love?" asked Wladek.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And are most people happy?"

"A thousandfold more so than we!"

Wladek emphasized that "we" significantly.

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

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

Wladek at first listened attentively, but later grew impatient.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"May I copy out the role for you?"

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

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

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

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

They gazed at each other a moment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Couldn't you borrow it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is it?" Janina asked curiously.

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

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

"Who is that person?" she asked uneasily.

"Kotlicki!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Janina awoke with tear-streaming eyes and utterly exhausted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Majkowska glared at her furiously, but did not reply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Miss Janina—" whispered Rosinska tenderly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am not speaking to you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER X

Janina lay sick in bed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why? Why?" Janina asked herself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Never!" answered Janina.

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

"No," answered Janina quietly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Janina thought about Bukowiec.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Janina glanced at him questioningly.

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

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

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

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

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