mind, added new scenes, changed
about situations and was so absorbed with his task that he no longer
paid any attention to how they were playing the fourth act.

Again applause filled the entire hall and the unanimous cry of:
"Author! Author!"

"They're calling for you, go out to them," someone whispered into
Glogowski's ear.

"The deuce I will! Go to the devil, sweet brother!"

Majkowska and Topolski were also being recalled.

Majkowska, all breathless, ran up to Glogowski.

"Mr. Glogowski! come, hurry!" she cried, taking him by the hand.

"Let me alone!" he growled threateningly.

Majkowska left him and Glogowski sat there and continued to think.
Neither the applause, nor the demands for his appearance nor the
success of his play interested him any longer, for he was sorely
worried by the knowledge that his play was entirely bad. He saw its
defects ever more plainly and the knowledge that another one of his
efforts had proved vain made him writhe with pain. With helpless
rage he listened to the public applauding the rude and characteristically
comic episodes which were merely the background upon which the
souls of his Churls had to be outlined, while the theme and thesis of the
play itself passed without making any impression.

"Mr. Glogowski I want you to go out after the fifth act if they call
for you," Janina said to him decisively.

"But please consider, who is calling for me! Don't you see that it
is the gallery? Don't you see the smiles of derision upon the faces
of the press and the public in the first rows of seats? I tell you
the play is bad, abominable and rotten! Wait and see what they will
write about it to-morrow."

"What will happen to-morrow we shall see to-morrow. To-day there is
success and your splendid play."

"Splendid!" he cried painfully. "If you could see the plan of it
that I have here in my head, if you could see how splendid and
complete it is here, you would know that what they are playing is
merely a poor rag and a fragment."

Immediately afterwards Cabinski, Topolski, and Kotlicki approached
Glogowski and urged him to appear before the public, but still he
resisted. Only at the end of the play when the entire audience was
wildly applauding and calling for the author, Glogowski went out on
the stage with Majkowska, bowed ostentatiously, smoothed his shock
of hair and clumsily retreated behind the scenes.

"If the play had dances, songs, and music, I wager it would run to