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

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

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

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

"Then you were seeking calm?"

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

"Forget about what?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Impossible!"

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

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

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

"I can't even understand why."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The soul is knowledge."

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

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

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

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

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

"All human beings are like that."

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

Again they became silent.

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

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

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

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

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

"Then we shall go together."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wladek rose eagerly to fulfill her behest.

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

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

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

"Good morning, esteemed counselor."

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

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

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

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

"Is she dangerously ill?"

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

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

"I will smooth the way for you."

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

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

"But if . . ."

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

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

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

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

Wladek went off with the money, whistling merrily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is a scoundrel!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes," answered Janina, unwrapping the paper.

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

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

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

"I will sell it cheap," she whispered.

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

"A ruble."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A base serpent."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mr. Niedzielski!" she called.

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

"Did you want anything?" he asked irascibly.

"Yes . . ."

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

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

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

"Ask them for some money for me."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Silence, you clown!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I haven't the money!"

"But neither have I," she begged quietly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tears were stifling her; life was stifling her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Janina willingly agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The strains of the old, sentimental song from The Cracovians and the Mountaineers floated on, interrupted only by frequent bursts of applause, the banging of beer glasses against the tables, the clatter of plates, the slamming of doors and the reports or rifles in the shooting galleries. The lanterns diffused a hazy and muddy light; girls in white aprons and with their hands full of beer glasses, passed in and out among the tables, flirted with the drinking men and flung cynical remarks and answers at those who accosted them. Ribald laughter and coarse jokes flew around like fire-works and were immediately answered by broad, thoughtless merriment.

The public expressed its satisfaction with the singing by shouting, beating time with their canes, and banging their beer glasses. At moments the wind would entirely drown out the singing, or bend the few wretched trees with a rustling sound and scatter the leaves over the stage and the heads of the public.

Wolska continued to sing. Her red vaudeville costume, with low-cut front, gleamed like a gaudy spot against the blue background of the stage and excellently accentuated her thin, thickly painted face, her sunken and pale eyes, and her sharp features which looked like the skeleton-like face of a starving man. She swayed from side to side with a heavy motion to the measure of the song:

"Such ardent love took hold of me, I embraced Stach most tenderly."

Her voice floated through the garden with a hollow, rasping sound and added to the din made by that noisy and drunken crowd. Brutal laughs broke out in sharp, penetrating scales, and those bravos emitted by the drunken threats of a Sunday public and interrupted by hiccoughs, beat against the stage with a hoarse and hollow roar together with the biting jibes that were not spared the singer. But she heard nothing and sang on, indifferent and cold to all that surrounded her. She flung forth tones, words, and mimicry with the automatism of a hypnotized woman, only at moments, her eyes would seek Janina's as though they were begging for pity.

Janina grew pale and red by turns, unable to endure any longer that alcohol-saturated atmosphere and that drunken din which filled her with aversion and disgust.

"I would rather die!" she thought. Oh, no, she would never be able to amuse such a public. She would spit in its eyes and scorn herself and then . . . if there were no other way out . . . drown herself in the Wisla!

Wolska finished her song and her partner, dressed in a Cracovian costume, went about among the drinking crowd with his notes in his hand, collecting money. Remarks that froze one with their cynicism and brutal frankness, were hurled into his face, but he only smiled with the dull smile of a habitual drunkard, nervously twitched his lips and humbly bowed his thanks for those ten-copeck pieces that were thrown on his notes.

Wolska, with closed eyes, stood beside the piano, nervously tugged at the golden lace of her waist and, groaning with painful anxiety, counted in her mind the number of copecks which her partner placed together with the notes beside her. The pianist again struck the keys and Wolska and her partner began to sing together some comic couplets, interwoven with a kind of "Krakowiak" which they danced in a half dreamy manner.

Janina could hardly wait for the end of the performance and, without saying anything about the impression that that drinking den had made on her, she took leave of Wolska and fairly ran away from that garden, that public, and that degradation.

During the entire day following, she did not leave her home. She ate nothing and hardly thought at all, but lay in bed and gazed blankly at the ceiling, following with her eyes, the last fly that crept drowsily and half dead over it.

In the evening, Sowinska came in, sat down on a trunk and, without any introduction, said harshly: "The room is already rented to another tenant, so to-morrow you can clear out of here. And since you owe us fifteen rubles, I will keep all your duds and give them back to you only when you pay me the money."

"Very well," answered Janina and she looked at Sowinska indifferently, as though nothing out of the ordinary were at stake. "Very well, I shall go!" she added in a quieter tone and arose from the bed.

"You will doubtlessly manage to help yourself in some way, won't you? You will yet come to see me in a carriage, eh?" said Sowinska and an ugly, hostile light gleamed in her owlish eyes.

"Very well," repeated Janina in the same mechanical way and began to pace up and down the room.

Sowinska, growing tired of waiting for some kind of reply, left the room.

"So all is ended!" whispered Janina in a hollow voice and the thought of death became a conscious reality in her mind and shone alluringly.

"What is death? A forgetting, a forgetting!" she answered herself aloud, standing still and sinking her eyes in those murky deeps that opened up before her soul.

"Yes, a forgetting, a forgetting!" she repeated slowly and for a long time sat motionless, gazing at the flame of the lamp.

The night dragged on slowly, the house became quiet, the lights were gradually extinguished in the long rows of windows and an ever deeper silence spread itself about, until everything became steeped in this drowsy silence.

The gray light of dawn was already beginning to streak the horizon and to illumine the faint outlines of the housetops when Janina awoke from her torpor and gazed about the room. She felt fully determined, so she sprang up from her chair and, driven on by some thought that lit up her eyes with a strange fire, walked quietly to the door and opened it. But the noisy click of the latch which she closed after her penetrated her with such a strange, sharp fear that she reeled back against the frame of the door and breathed heavily for a few moments. Finally, she quietly pulled off her shoes and boldly, but with the utmost caution, passed through the hall and entered a large room adjoining the kitchen which was used as a dining room and a workroom in the day time and as a sleeping room for Mme. Anna's apprentices at night. The close and heavy air of the room almost suffocated Janina. With outstretched hands and bated breath, she stole toward the kitchen so slowly that those minutes seemed an eternity to her. At moments, she paused and, overcoming her trembling that awful trembling listened to the loud breathing and snoring of those sleeping there and then went on again, setting her teeth with a desperate strength. Large drops of perspiration rolled down her forehead from exertion and fear and her heart beat so slowly and painfully that she almost felt the pulsation of it in her throat. The kitchen door was open and Janina passed through it like a shadow, but she stumbled against the bed of the servant-girl, which stood very near the door. She grew numb with fear and for a long time stood motionless and breathless, almost in a state of suspended animation, gazing with terrified eyes at the bed whose dim outlines she could scarcely make out in the darkness. But finally, rallying all her strength and courage, she walked boldly to the shelf upon which stood various kitchen utensils and supplies and felt one after another with the greatest caution, until finally, her hand rested upon a flat oblong bottle containing essence of vinegar. She had seen it here a few hours ago and now, having found it, she snatched it up so violently from among the other articles that a tin cover fell with a crash upon the floor. Janina unconsciously bent her head in terror, for the clash of the falling cover resounded with such a tremendous echo in her brain that it seemed as though the whole world were crashing down on her.

"Who's there?" called the servant, awakened by the noise. "Who's there?" she repeated in a louder voice.

"It is I . . . I came for a drink of water," answered Janina with a choking voice, after a long while, nervously pressing the bottle to her breast. The servant indistinctly mumbled something and did not speak again.

Janina ran to her room, as though pursued by the furies of madness, no longer caring whether anyone heard her or might awaken and, having reached it, locked the door and only then collapsed, half dead from, exhaustion and trembled so violently that she thought she would fall to pieces. The tears, which she did not even feel, began to stream down her face. They gave her so great a relief that she fell asleep. In the morning Sowinska again reminded her that it was time to move and, brutally opening the door before her, told her to get out. Janina dressed hastily and, without answering a word, left the house.

She walked along the streets, feeling nothing but her homelessness and that dizziness in her head which was engulfing all her thoughts. She passed through Nowy Swiat and the Ujazdowskie Allees and did not stop until she reached the lake in Lazienki Park.

The trees stood dying and their yellow leaves spread a golden carpet over the paths. The tranquillity of an autumn day hung in the air and only now and then a flock of sparrows flew by with a noisy twitter, or the swans upon the lake cried out mournfully and beat with their wings the muddy-green water that looked like worn velvet. All around could be seen the destruction wrought by the hand of golden autumn. Wherever it touched the trees, there the leaves withered and fell to the ground, the grass dried up and the last autumn asters bent their lifeless heads and dripped with dew, as though weeping tears after death.

"Death!" whispered Janina, pressing in her hands the bottle that she had secured on the previous night and she sat down, perhaps on the same bench on which she had sat that spring. It seemed to her that she was slowly drowsing away and that her thoughts were fading, for her consciousness had begun to disintegrate and she was already ceasing to feel and to know. Everything was falling away from her and dying, like the nature about her that also seemed to be burning out and drawing its last breath.

A rapturous feeling, full of peace and calm, filled Janina's heart, for the entire past was vanishing from her memory; all her miseries, all her disappointments, and all her struggles faded away, paled and dispersed, as though absorbed by that pale autumn sun that hung over the park. It seemed to her that she had never passed through them, never felt anything, never suffered anything. It seemed to her that she was curling up within herself, growing smaller and shrinking, like that withered leaf that hung upon the barbed wire of the fence, all ready to drop and be hurled down into the abyss of death by that light breath of wind. Then again it seemed to her that she was ripping to pieces, like that spider web that tangled itself about the grass and floated in glistening filaments through the air; that she was unwinding into such gossamer strands, into ever finer and finer filaments, until she had vanished away into infinity and lost all consciousness of herself. This feeling moved her strongly and a strange tenderness and pity for herself filled her heart with sorrow.

"Poor girl! How unhappy she is!" whispered Janina, as though she was speaking of some other person.

Janina's soul was so rapidly disintegrating in its agony that she no longer had a full and clear conception of what the miseries were that had vanquished her, what misfortunes had broken her, nor did she know why she was weeping or who she was.

"Death!" she repeated mechanically and that word found a deep and unconscious echo in her brain and nerves and pressed only a few tears from her eyes.

She stopped, without knowing why, before the marble figure of the dancing Faun. The rains had darkened his stony body and rusted the locks of his hair that curled like hyacinths, and his face, furrowed by streams of water, seemed to have grown longer since the spring, but in his eyes there gleamed and burned that same mockery and his crooked legs continued their mad dance. "Lo! lo! lo!" he seemed to sing, shaking his flute, laughing and jeering at everything, and raising boldly to the sun his head which was crowned as though with a bacchantic wreath by the withered leaves that had fallen on it.

Janina gazed at him, but being unable to remember or understand anything, she passed on.

On Nowy Swiat, in one of the chambres garnies, she asked for a room, ink, letter-paper, and envelopes. When everything had been supplied, Janina locked herself up in the room and wrote two letters: one brief, dry, and painfully ironical letter to her father and another longer and entirely calm one to Glogowski. She notified them both of her suicide. She addressed the letters with the greatest accuracy and laid them in a conspicuous place.

Afterwards Janina calmly took from her pocket the bottle with the poison, uncorked it, held the liquid up to the light and then, without thinking or hesitating any longer drank it to the very dregs.

Suddenly, she stretched out her arms, a gleam of terror shot across her face, her eyes closed, as though blinded by some measureless void that opened before, and she fell prone upon the floor, in dreadful convulsions of pain.

A few days later, Kotlicki, having returned from Lublin where he had installed Topolski's company, was sitting in a coffee-house, looking over the newspapers, and by some strange chance his eye fell upon the following item among the local accidents of the day:

"THE SUICIDE OF AN ACTRESS"

"On Tuesday, in the chambres garnies on Nowy Swiat, the servants were aroused by moans issuing from one of the rooms which an hour ago had been engaged by an unknown woman. They broke open the door and a dreadful sight met their eyes. Upon the floor lay writhing in pain a young and beautiful woman. Two letters left behind by her revealed that she was a certain Janina Orlowska, a former chorus girl who appeared last season in the N. N. Theater under Cabinski's management.

"A physician was called and the unconscious woman was taken to the Hospital of the Infant Jesus. Her condition is serious but it still holds forth some hope. Miss Orlowska poisoned herself with essence of vinegar, as is attested by the bottle that was found in her room. The cause of her desperate act is unknown, but an investigation is being made. . . ."

Kotlicki read this over several times, knitted his brows, tugged at his mustache, read it again and, finally, crumpled up The Courier and threw it in anger upon the floor.

"A comedienne! A comedienne!" he whispered scornfully, biting his lips.

THE END