d began to pace around the table with a soft, feline
step, smiling and repeating to herself: "I will get him, I will get
him! At last I will find a little rest in my life, my wanderings
will come to an end!"

Scenes from the past floated before her memory: whole years of
wandering with a company of provincial actors. Krenska had abandoned
the theater because she managed to catch a young fellow who married
her. She lived with him for two whole years . . . two years which
she recalled with bitterness. Her husband was insanely jealous and
frequently beat her.

At last he died and she was free, but she had no longer any desire
to return to the theater. She shuddered at the thought of resuming
that eternal pilgrimage from town to town and the everlasting
poverty of a provincial actor's life. Moreover, she realized that
she was growing old and homely. So she sold all her household
furnishings, received a pension from the management to which her
husband had belonged, and for half a year played the role of a
widow. She was very eager to marry a second time and sedulously
spread her nets, but all in vain, for her own temperament stood in
the way. With money in her pocket, there awakened in her again the
former actress with her careless and sporty disposition and craving
for pleasure and enjoyment. Being still seductive, she was
surrounded by a swarm of various admirers with whom she squandered
all she had, together with the reputation which she had succeeded in
establishing for herself with the aid of her husband.

Krenska had no abilities of any kind, but she possessed a great deal
of cleverness, so, instead of resigning herself to despair when the
last of her admirers had forsaken her, she inserted an advertisement
in the Kielce Gazette reading: "Middle-aged widow of a government
official desires position as a housekeeper to widower, or as a
social secretary."

She did not have to wait long for results. Her advertisement was
answered in person by Orlowski, who was badly in need of a
house-keeper, for Janina was still attending school and he could not
himself manage the servants. Krenska seemed so quiet, humble, and
full of grief over the loss of her husband that he did not ask her
any questions, but engaged her immediately.

Orlowski was a widower who possessed a good salary, a few thousand
dollars in cash, and an only daughter--an absent daughter whom he
detested. Krenska at first tried to turn the heads of the station