lf, shaking as though
with an icy chill. And he began to stray distractedly all about the
theater.

"I congratulate you!" said Kotlicki, pressing Glogowski's hand. "The
play is too severe and brutal, but it is something new!"

"Which means neither fish nor flesh!" answered Glogowski with a
forced smile.

"We'll see how it will be further on. . . . The public is surprised
to see a folk play without dances. . . ."

"What the devil do they want! It is not a ballet!" muttered
Glogowski impatiently.

"But you know they dote on songs and dances."

"Then let them go to a vaudeville show!" retorted Glogowski. And he
walked away.

After the second act the applause was louder and more prolonged.

In the dressing-rooms the humor of the actors began to rise to its
usual level.

Cabinski had already twice sent Wicek to the box office to find out
how things were going there. Gold's first reply was: "Good," and his
second: "Sold out."

Glogowski continued to torment himself, but now in a different way,
for having heard the applause for which he had so feverishly waited,
he had calmed himself a bit and sat behind the scenes watching the
play. Now he became pale with anger, kicked his hat with his foot
and hissed with impatience, for he could no longer endure what he
saw. Out of his peasant characters, which were in every inch true to
life, they were making banal figures of the sentimental melodrama,
puppets dressed in folk costumes. The playing of the men actors was
at least to some extent bearable, but the women, with the exception
of Majkowska and Mirowska, who acted the part of an old beggar
woman, played abominably. Instead of speaking their parts, they
rattled them off in a singsong voice, and over-emphasized hatred,
love, and laughter. Everything was done so mechanically,
artificially, and thoughtlessly, without a grain of truth or
sincerity that Glogowski fairly choked with despair. It was merely a
masquerade.

"Sharper! More energetically!" he whispered, stamping his foot, but
no one paid any attention to his exhortations.

Suddenly, a smile flitted over his lips, for he saw Janina entering
the stage. She caught that smile and that saved her, for her voice
had died in her breast. She was trembling from stage fright so that
she did not see the stage, nor the actors, nor the public; it seemed
to her that she was engulfed in a sea of light. When she saw that
friendly smile she immediately recovered her calm and c