the performance Janina drew closer to Krenska and the latter, in a moment of weakness, betrayed the secret concerning her past life. She revealed to Janina a new realm, wondrous and alluring.
She listened with rapt attention to Krenska's accounts of the stage, her numerous appearances and triumphs, and the vivid life of an actor. As she related her experiences Krenska was herself carried away by enthusiasm and painted them in glowing colors; she no longer remembered the miseries of that life and held up only the brightest pictures to the gaze of the enraptured girl. She pulled out of her trunk faded and musty copies of roles she had once impersonated, read them to Janina and played them, stirred by memories of the past.
All this fascinated the girl and awoke in her certain strong desires, but it did not, as yet, absorb her; it was not, as yet, that mysterious "something" for which she had been waiting so long.
She began to read with great interest the theatrical criticisms and the details about actors in the newspapers. Finally, whether actuated by ennui or by an instinctive impulse, she bought a complete set of Shakespeare's works and, forthwith, was lost! She found that "something" for which she had sought so long; she found her hero, her aim, her ideal—it was the theater. She devoured Shakespeare with all the inherent intensity of her nature.
It would be difficult to epitomize the violent upheaval that now took place in Janina's soul, the wild soaring of her imagination, and the enlargement and expansion of her whole being. There swarmed about her a vast throng of characters evil, noble, base, petty, heroic, and struggling souls. There passed through her such tones and words, such overwhelming thoughts and emotions that she felt as though the whole universe was contained in her soul!
She became consumed with a desire for the theater and for unusual emotions. The winters seemed too warm for her, the snowfalls too light; the springs dragged along too slowly, the summers were too cool, the autumns too dry; all this she visioned in her imagination in far grander outlines. She wished to see the acme of beauty, the acme of evil, and every act magnified to titanic proportions.
Orlowski knew a little about her "disease," but he smiled at it in scorn.
"You comedienne!" he called her, scoffingly.
Krenska would add fuel to this fire, for she wished at any cost to see Janina leave home. She persuaded her of her talent and warmly praised the theatrical career.
Janina could not pluck up courage to take the decisive step. She feared those dark and vague presentiments and an unaccountable feeling of terror at times would seize upon her. She could not summon the necessary determination. A storm of some kind only could uproot her and carry her far away from home in the same way as it uprooted the trees and scattered them over the desolate fields. She was waiting now for some chance happening to cast her into the world. Krenska, in the meanwhile, kept her informed of the activities of the provincial theatrical companies. Janina made certain preparations and savings. Her father paid her regularly the interest on her inheritance and this enabled her in a year's time to lay aside about two hundred rubles.
Grzesikiewicz's proposal and her father's insistance on her marriage roused a stormy protest in her.
"No, no, no!" she repeated to herself, pacing excitedly up and down her room. "I will not marry!"
Janina had never contemplated matrimony seriously. At times the vision of a great, overwhelming love would gleam through her mind, and she would dream of it for a while; but of marriage she had never given a thought.
She even liked Grzesikiewicz, because he would never speak lightly to her about love, nor enact those amorous comedies to which other admirers had accustomed her. She liked him for the simplicity with which he would relate all that he had to suffer at school, how he was abused and humiliated as the son of a peasant and innkeeper and how he paid them back in peasant fashion with his fists. He would smile while relating this to her, but there was in his smile a trace of sorrow.
She opened the door of her father's room and was about to tell him abruptly and decisively that there was no need of Grzesikiewicz's coming, but Orlowski was already enjoying his after-dinner nap, seated in a big arm-chair with his feet propped against the window-sill. The sun was shining straight into his face which was almost entirely bronzed from sunburn.
Janina withdrew.
"No, no, no! … Even though I have to run away from home, I will not marry!" she repeated to herself fiercely.
But immediately there followed this determination a feeling of womanly helplessness.
"I will go to my uncle's house. … Yes! … and from there I will go to the stage. No one can force me to stay here."
Thereupon, the blood would rush to her head with indignation and she would immediately gaze with courage into the future, determined to meet anything that might happen rather than submit.
She heard her father arise and then go to the window; she listened to the station bells, and to the jabbering of a few Jews who were boarding the train; she saw the red cap of her father, and the yellow striped cap of the telegrapher conversing through his window with some lady; she saw and heard all, but understood nothing, so absorbed was she in thought.
Krenska entered and in her habitual way began to circle around the table with quiet, cat-like motion before she spoke. Her face bore an expression of sympathy and there was tenderness in her voice.
"Miss Janina!"
The young woman glanced at her.
"No! I assure you that I will not!" she said with emphasis.
"Your father gave Grzesikiewicz his word of honor … he will demand unquestioning obedience … what will come of it?"
"No! I will not marry! … My father can retract his word; he cannot compel me—"
"Yes … but there will be an awful rumpus, an awful rumpus!"
"I have stood so many, I can stand some more."
"I am afraid that this one will not end so smoothly. Your father has such a dreadful temper. … I can't understand how you are able to bear as much as you do. … If I were in your place, Miss Janina, I know what I should do … and do it now, immediately!"
"I am anxious to know … give me your advice."
"First of all, I would leave home to avoid all this trouble before it begins. I would go to Warsaw."
"Well, and what would you do next?" asked Janina with trembling voice.
"I would join some theater and let happen what will!"
"Yes, that's a good idea, but … but—"
And she broke off, for the old helplessness and fears reasserted themselves. She sat silent without answering Krenska.
Janina put on a jacket and felt hat and taking a stick wandered off into the woods.
She climbed to the top of that rocky hill from which spread out below her a wide view of the woods, the villages beyond them, and an endless expanse of fields. She sat gazing about her for a while, but the calm that reigned all around, contrasted with the feeling of unquiet and foreboding in her own soul, as before an impending storm, gave her no peace.
At dusk
