e . . . well, it doesn't matter. We can drink the coffee just as
well out of these, can't we? . . ." she said, at once adding, "dear
me, I forgot the sugar! Do you like your coffee sweet, mademoiselle?"

The old woman left the room and through the door Janina could hear
her taking sugar out of a glass bowl. She brought in on a little
saucer two lumps.

"Please have some in your coffee. . . . You see at my age I can't
have anything sweet," she said, drinking audibly.

Finally, after perhaps half an hour, in which her hostess chattered
interminably and Janina listened with increasing weariness, the girl
got up to go, and at the very door she met Wladek.

"Visiting my mother!" he exclaimed.

"Certainly. There's nothing wrong in that," she answered, smiling at
his confusion.

"Heavens! No doubt she's been telling you what a scoundrel I am. I
beg your pardon for having had to listen."

"Oh, it didn't offend me in the least."

"It only made you laugh, I know. The whole theater is laughing at my
expense, for all the ladies have already been here."

"Your mother loves you," Janina spoke seriously.

"That love is beginning to choke me like a bone in my throat!" he
answered sourly and wanted to add something else, but Janina bowed
silently and passed on.

Wladek did not have the courage to follow her and went upstairs.

"What is happening in my own home?" she thought as she walked toward
the theater. "What is my father doing? . . ."

And she suddenly felt within herself a glimmer of sympathy for that
tyrant. She saw now how lonely he must be among strangers who
ridiculed his eccentricities.

During the whole performance, the vision of her father constantly
recurred in her memory. She asked herself what it was that had made
him so cruel, and why he hated her?

Kotlicki brought her a bouquet of roses. She received it coolly,
without even glancing at him.

"I see that you are out of sorts to-day," he said, taking her hand.

She pulled it away.

Majkowska, who was just then passing, whispered, pointing to
Rosinska: "What a scarecrow! What conventional acting! She is
incapable of producing even a single accent of true feeling!"

Behind Janina some gentleman in a high hat was pressing the hands of
one of the chorus girls.

"Things are turning out fine, for to-morrow, there will be no
rehearsal and we can go to Bielany in the afternoon. Wait for us at
your home, we will drop in and take you along with us," whis