, gazing out upon the street.

"Is it possible that he loves me?" she thought to herself, sipping
her cooled chocolate.

She pulled some role out of her pocket, read a few lines, and again
gazed out upon the street.

The dilapidated hacks, pulled by lean horses, dragged along lazily;
the tramways rumbled by; along the sidewalks people threaded like a
long, immovable ribbon.

The clock chimed three. Cabinska arose and started for home, walking
slowly until she spied the editor walking with Nicolette and the
calm horizon of her mind suddenly became clouded.

"He, with Nicolette? . . . with that . . . base intriguer?"

Already from a distance she scorched them with the gaze of a Gorgon.

At the corner of Warecka Street, Nicolette suddenly disappeared and
the editor approached her with a beaming countenance.

"Good morning! . . ." he cried, extending his hand.

Pepa measured him coolly and turned her face away.

"What sort of nonsense is this, Pepa?" he asked, quietly.

"Oh, you are unspeakably mean!" she retorted.

"A comedy of some kind again? . . ." he queried.

"You dare to speak to me in that way?"

"Well . . . I'll quit then and merely say: good-day!" he snapped
back angrily, bowed stiffly and, before she could bethink herself,
jumped into a hack and drove away.

Cabinska was petrified with indignation.

Cabinska, on returning home whipped the children, scolded the nurse,
and locked herself in her room.

She heard her husband enter, ask for her, and knock at her door;
when dinner was served, she did not come out, but paced angrily up
and down her room.

Soon thereafter, Janina arrived. Cabinska greeted her cordially in
her boudoir, becoming suddenly unrecognizably hospitable.

Janina left alone, began to explore that boudoir with curiosity,
for, although the entire house looked like a junk shop, or a
railroad waiting-room of the third class, filled with packs, valises
and trunks, this one room possessed an almost luxurious air. It had
two windows opening upon the garden, the walls were decorated with a
paper resembling brocatelle, and cupids were painted on the ceiling.
The grotesquely carved furniture was upholstered with crimson silk
striped with gold. A cream-colored rug in imitation of antique
Italian covered the floor. A set of Shakespeare, bound in gilded
morocco lay on a lacquered table painted in Chinese designs.

Janina did not pay much attention to all this, for she was entirely
abs