another hour!" she
answered with bitterness.

"That's merely talk! Each one of us could break away from the
theater, if we only would," said Wolska quietly. "For me this life
is harder than for any of you and I know that if I forsook the stage
my lot would be much better, but whenever I think that I shall have
to quit the stage some day, so great a fear besets me that it seems
as though I should die without it."

"The theater is a slow poisoning, a dying by inches each day!"
complained Razowiec.

"Don't you whine, for your sickness comes not from the theater, but
from your stomach," remarked Wawrzecki.

"That continual dying and poisoning is, nevertheless, a kind of
ecstasy!" began Janina anew.

"Oh, a splendid ecstasy! If you want to call hunger, continual envy,
and the inability to live otherwise, an ecstasy!" sneered Rosinska.

"Happy are they who have not fallen a prey to that disease, or
escaped it in time" added Razowiec.

"But isn't it better to live and suffer and die in that way, as long
as you have art as your goal. A thousand times would I prefer to
live that way than to be my husband's servant, the slave of my
children, and a household chattel!" exclaimed Janina with a
passionate outburst.

Wladek began to declaim with a comical pathos:

"Oh priestess, most elect! To thee, in this temple of art, High
altars I'll erect!

"Please forgive me that," continued Wladek. "I myself say that
outside of art there is nothing! If it were not for the
theater . . ."

"You would have become a cobbler!" interposed Glas.

"Only a very young and a very naive woman can talk like that,"
spitefully exclaimed Kaczkowska.

"Or one who does not yet know what Cabinski's salary tastes like,"
added Rosinska.

"Oh, thou art worthy of pity! You have enthusiasm . . . poverty will
rob you of it; you have inspiration . . . poverty will rob you of
it; you have youth, talent, and beauty . . . poverty will rob you of
it all!" declaimed Piesh in the stern tones of an oracle.

"No, all that is nothing! . . . But such a company, such artists,
such plays as these will ruin everything. And if you are able to
endure such a hell then you will become a great artist!" whispered
Stanislawski sourly.

"A master has proclaimed it, so bow your heads, oh multitude, and
say that it must be so!" jeered Wawrzecki.

"Fool! . . ." snarled Stanislawski.

"Mummy!" retorted Wawrzecki.

"I'll tell you how I began my career," said Wladek.