gave Grzesikiewicz his word of honor . . . he will
demand unquestioning obedience . . . what will come of it?"

"No! I will not marry! . . . My father can retract his word; he
cannot compel me--"

"Yes . . . but there will be an awful rumpus, an awful rumpus!"

"I have stood so many, I can stand some more."

"I am afraid that this one will not end so smoothly. Your father has
such a dreadful temper. . . . I can't understand how you are able to
bear as much as you do. . . . If I were in your place, Miss Janina,
I know what I should do . . . and do it now, immediately!"

"I am anxious to know . . . give me your advice."

"First of all, I would leave home to avoid all this trouble before
it begins. I would go to Warsaw."

"Well, and what would you do next?" asked Janina with trembling
voice.

"I would join some theater and let happen what will!"

"Yes, that's a good idea, but . . . but--"

And she broke off, for the old helplessness and fears reasserted
themselves. She sat silent without answering Krenska.

Janina put on a jacket and felt hat and taking a stick wandered off
into the woods.

She climbed to the top of that rocky hill from which spread out
below her a wide view of the woods, the villages beyond them, and an
endless expanse of fields. She sat gazing about her for a while, but
the calm that reigned all around, contrasted with the feeling of
unquiet and foreboding in her own soul, as before an impending
storm, gave her no peace.

At dusk Janina returned home. She did not speak either to her father
or to Krenska but immediately after supper went to her own room and
sat reading George Sand's Consuelo until a late hour.

During the night she was perturbed with unquiet dreams from which
she started up every now and then, perspiring heavily, and awoke
fully before dawn, unable to sleep any longer. She lay upon her bed
with wide open eyes, gazing fixedly at the ceiling on which
flickered a patch of light reflected from the station lamp. A train
went roaring by and she listened for a long while to its rhythmic
rumbling and clatter that seemed like a whole choir of voices and
tones streaming in through her window.

At the farther end of the room, steeped in a twilight full of pale
gleams that flickered like severed rays from a light long since
extinguished, she seemed to see apparitions and vague outlines of
mysterious scenes, figures, and sounds. Her wearied brain peopled
the room with the phantoms