was all he said.

In the meanwhile they were playing only operettas, for they filled
the theater.

Janina smiled in reply to Cabinski's vague promises, although torn
by impatience. But she had already learned to control her feelings
and to wear a mask of smiling indifference. She consoled herself
with the thought that sooner or later she would have done with the
chorus and that the moment must at last arrive when she would appear
in a real role.

She had already become saturated with the atmosphere in which she
lived. And that public, so strange and capricious, which some
accused of ignorance, of a total lack of taste and higher desires,
and others of indifference, but to which all paid homage and before
which they all cringed and trembled, begging its favors that public
even filled Janina with anger. There was something strange in her
attitude. She would dress very fastidiously for the stage, merely
for the purpose of attracting attention to herself; she would adopt
the most graceful poses, but whenever she felt the gaze of the
multitude it would send a depressing shudder through her.

"Shoemakers!" she would whisper scornfully, thereafter remaining in
the shadow.

In the dressing-room chorus girls passively submitted to Janina, for
they feared her, knowing that she had intimate and continual
relations with the management. They were likewise impressed by the
fact that Wladek followed her continually and that Kotlicki, who
formerly used to come behind the scenes only occasionally, now sat
there daily throughout the whole performance and conversed with
Janina with his hat off. She was surrounded by a sort of invisible
aura of unconscious respect, for although many surmises were made
about her on account of Kotlicki, no one ever dared insinuate
anything to her face.

At first, Janina inclined toward the leading actresses of the
company and wanted to enter upon a more intimate acquaintance with
them, but they discouraged her, for whenever she began to speak to
them about the theater or about art, they would become silent, or
else commence to tell her about their own triumphs.

Stanislawski and the stage-director were Janina's sincere friends.
Many times during the rehearsals they would go upstairs to the
deserted dressing-rooms or to the storeroom under the stage, and
there tell stories of the theater and the actors of their day an
epoch that was already dead. They would conjure up before her eyes
great figures,