"Go buy it!"
"Say Sowinska!" called down one of the girls through the open door to the lower dressing-room, "I met that same guy … you know! … I was walking along Nowy Swiat."
"Tell it to the marines! Who would fall for such a scarecrow as you!" put in another.
"I've bought a new suit … look!" cried a small, very pretty blonde.
"You mean he bought it for you!"
"Goodness, no! … I bought it from my own savings."
"Persian lamb! … oh! … Do you think we'll believe you? …
Come now, you bought it out of that fellow's savings, didn't you?"
"It's pure lily! … The waist is low-cut with a yoke of cream-colored embroidery, the skirt is plain with a shirred hem, the hat is trimmed with violets," another girl was recounting, as she slipped her ballet skirts over her head.
"Listen there, you lily-colored kid … give me back that ruble that you owe me. … "
"After the play when I get it I'll give it back to you, honest!"
"Ha! ha! Cabinski will give it to you, like fun … "
"I tell you, my dear, I'm getting desperate. … He coughed a little … but I thought nothing of it … until yesterday, when I looked down his little throat I saw … white spots … I ran for the doctor … he examined him and said: diphtheria! I sat by him all night, rubbed his throat every hour … he couldn't say a word, only showed me with his little finger how it hurt … and the tears streamed down his face so pitifully that I thought I'd die of grief … I left the janitress with him, for I must make some money … I left my cloak to cover him with … but all, all that is not enough! … " a slim and pretty actress with a face worn by suffering and poverty was telling her neighbor in a subdued voice, while she curled her hair, carmined her pale lips, and with the pencil gave a defiant touch to her eyes dimmed by tears and sleepiness.
"Helen! your mother asked about you to-day … "
"Surely, not about me … my mother died long ago."
"Don't tell me that! Majkowska knows you and your mother well and saw you together on Marshalkowska Street the other day."
"Majkowska ought to buy herself a pair of glasses, if she's so blind as that … I was going downtown with the housekeeper."
The other girls began to laugh at her. The one who had denied her mother blew out her candle and left in irritation.
"She's ashamed of her own mother. That's true, but such a mother! … "
"A plain peasant woman. She compromises her before everybody. …
At least, she could refrain from making a show before other people!"
"How so? Can a girl be ashamed of her mother? … " cried Janina, who had been sitting in silence, until those last words stirred her to indignation.
"You are a newcomer, so you don't know anything," several answered her at once.
"May I come in? … " called a masculine voice from without.
"You can't! you can't!" chorused the girls energetically.
"Zielinska! your editor has come."
A tall, stout chorus girl, rustling her skirts, passed out of the room.
"Shepska! take a look out after them."
Shepska went out, but came back immediately.
"They've gone downstairs."
The stage bell rang violently.
"To the stage!" called the stage-director at the door. "We begin immediately!"
There arose an indescribable hubbub. All the girls began to talk and shout at the same time; they ran about, tore away hairpins and curling irons from one another, powdered themselves, quarreled over trifles, blew out candles, hastily closed their dressing-cases and rushed down the stairs in crowds, for the second bell had already sounded.
Janina descended last of all and stood behind the scenes. The performance began. They were playing some kind of half fairy-like operetta. Janina could hardly recognize those people or that theater everything had undergone such a magical transformation and taken on a new beauty under the influence of powder, paint, and light! …
The music, with the quiet caressing tones of the flute, floated through the silence and stole into Janina's soul, lulling it sweetly … and later, a dance of some kind, soft, voluptuous, and intoxicating, enveloped her with its charm, lured and rocked her on the waves of rhythm and held her in an ecstatic lethargy.
She felt herself drawn ever farther into a confused whirl of lights, tones and colors. Her impulsive and sensuous nature, struggling hitherto with the drab commonplace of everyday events and people, was fascinated. It was almost as she had visioned it in her soul; full of lights, music, thrilling accents, ecstatic swoons, strong colors, and stormy and overpowering emotions, breaking with the force of thunderbolts.
The suffocating odor of powder dust floated about her like a cloud, while from the crowded hall there flowed a stream of hot breaths and desiring glances that broke against the stage like a magnetic wave, drowning in forgetfulness all that was not song, music, and pleasure.
When the act ended and a storm of applause broke loose, she was on the verge of fainting. She bent her head and eagerly drank in those murmurs resembling lightning flashes and, like them blinding the soul. She breathed in those cries of the delighted public with her full breath and with all the might of her soul that craved for fame. She closed her eyes, so that that impression, that picture might last longer.
The enchanting vision had dissolved. Over the stage moved men in their shirt sleeves and without vests; they were changing the scenes, arranging the furniture, fastening the props. She saw the grimy necks, the dirty and ugly faces, the coarse and hardened hands and the heavy forms.
She went out on the stage and through a slit in the curtain gazed out on the dim hall packed full of people. She saw hundreds of young faces, women's faces, smiling and still stirred by the music, while their owners fanned themselves; the men in their black evening clothes formed dark spots scattered at regular intervals, upon the light background of feminine toilettes.
Janina felt a strange disappointment as she realized that the faces of the public were very much like those of Grzesikiewicz, her father, her home acquaintances, the principal of her boarding school, the professors at the academy and the telegrapher at Bukowiec. For the moment, it seemed to her that that was a sheer impossibility. How so? … She, of course, knew what to think about those others, whom long ago she had classified as fools, light-heads, drunkards, gossipers, silly geese and house-hens; small and shallow souls, a band of common eaters-of-bread, sunk in the shallow morass of material existence. And these people that filled the theater and doled out applause, and whom she had once thought of as demi-gods were they the same as those others? Janina asked herself, that, wonderingly.
"Madame!" said a voice beside her.
She tore
